MS · jury_instructions
Proposed Mississippi Plain Language Model Jury Instructions - Civil 1402
Defamation - Malice in a Defamation Action
You must decide whether [name of defendant] [said/wrote] the statement with hatred or
malice towards [name of plaintiff]. To determine if a statement was made with hatred or malice,
you should consider whether [name of defendant] [said/wrote] the statement knowing that it was
false or whether [he/she/it] [said/wrote] the statement with very little care as to whether it was
true or false. [Name of plaintiff] must present clear and convincing evidence that [name of
defendant] acted with hatred or malice.
Definition(s) in this Instruction:
In this instruction, “clear and convincing evidence” means that the evidence is so strong
that it leads you to a firm belief or conclusion, without hesitating, as to what the facts are and that
the party’s [claim/claims] [is/are] true.
In this instruction, “malice” means a [person/business/corporation] intentionally did
something wrong without having a valid reason or excuse.
History
Proposed Mississippi Plain Language Model Jury Instructions - Civil 1402 (current as of February 17, 2012). Submitted in 2012 by the Mississippi Model Jury Instructions Commission (created by the Supreme Court of Mississippi by order of December 30, 2008) and published by the Court on courts.ms.gov. The Court states that these model jury instructions have not been adopted or approved by the Supreme Court of Mississippi.
Provenance
- Source
- courts.ms.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-25
- Edition
- 2026-09-25
- Content hash
ae62f103007a801ef0a8fe66e962ec7c23aec6ad3f5e92c3a332c6dda62788b4
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.