BARNES, J.
As for Instruction No. 22, we first note that it is based on former Indiana Pattern Jury Instruction No. 9.03. [Footnote omitted.] Although our supreme court has not formally approved the Indiana Pattern Jury Instructions for use, it has recognized their existence and given them some preferential status. Timberman, 918 N.E.2d at 295. The pattern instruction provided, in pertinent part:
The plaintiff has the burden of proving the following propositions by a preponderance of the evidence:
[Here set forth the elements of the plaintiff’s cause of action, tailored to reflect the particular factual disputes raised by the evidence.]
* * * * *
As I have stated, the plaintiff must prove these propositions; the defendant has no burden of disproving them.
* * * * *
Ind. Pattern Jury Instruction No. 9.03. The comments to the pattern instruction provided that “[a]llegations contained in the complaint or answer upon which there has been evidence should be set out in the instruction.” Ind. Pattern Jury Instruction No. 9.03 cmt.
Instruction No. 22 directs the jury that Rosales must prove the following by a preponderance of the evidence:
That Defendant was negligent in any of the following ways:
A. Failed to implement and monitor a system for the provision of health services and emergency care at Hailmann Elementary;
B. Failed to properly or timely train staff at Hailmann Elementary;
C. Failed to assemble a First Aid team at Hailmann Elementary;
D. Failed to prepare for a foreseeable medical emergency at Hailmann Elementary;
E. Failed to supervise those who had the responsibility to provide health services and emergency care at Hailmann Elementary.
Plaintiff need prove only one of these allegations above and not all of them.
App. p. 94.
The instruction does not mention the proper standard of care or clarify that Rosales was merely alleging the School failed to meet the proper standard of care by failing to perform one or more of these acts. This instruction allowed the jury to find the School negligent in the event it found the School had not, for instance, put together a First Aid team. However, as the Indiana Supreme Court has said, when discussing the policy manual of a large retail chain, a company’s rules and policies may exceed what is required by ordinary care in any given situation. Wal-Mart, 774 N.E.2d at 894. “Rules and policies in [the company’s] Manual may have been established for any number of reasons having nothing to do with safety and ordinary care . . . .” Id. Such is the case here. The jury should have been charged with determining if the School acted reasonably and with ordinary care notwithstanding what its entire safety and response Plan was or was not.
Rosales also argues that any error in the instruction was harmless. “[E]ven if there is an error in a particular instruction, it does not require reversal unless the jury is misled as to the law in the case.” Timberman, 918 N.E.2d at 300. The jury here was instructed to consider all of the “instructions as a whole and construe them in harmony with each other” and to “consider all of the instructions together, as a package” and not to “ignore any instructions, or any part of any instruction.” Tr. pp. 848-49. The trial court also instructed the jury that:
Negligence is a failure to do what a reasonably careful and prudent person would do under the same or similar circumstances or the doing of something that a reasonably careful or prudent person would not do under same or similar circumstances. In other words, negligence is the failure to exercise reasonable or ordinary care.
Id. at 852.
While we are reluctant to interfere in a case which has gone to jury verdict, we do so here because Instruction No. 22 given in this case misrepresents the standard of care to be considered in a negligence case. Although the jury was separately instructed on the proper standard of care, Instruction No. 22 then instructed the jury that the School’s failure to perform one of the listed acts was negligence. The jury could have found that the School was negligent by failing to perform one of the acts listed in Instruction No. 22 without finding that the School failed to exercise reasonable or ordinary care. We conclude that the conflicting instructions misled the jury as to the law regarding the standard of care. Despite language in other instructions, we feel that the lowered bar for the plaintiff as a result of Instruction No. 22 demands a reversal.
FRIEDLANDER, J., concurs.
CRONE, J., concurs in part and dissents in part with opinion:
I must respectfully disagree . . . with the majority’s conclusion that the trial court committed reversible error in giving Instruction No. 22. Unlike the erroneous instruction at issue in Wal-Mart, Instruction No. 22 does not attempt to define (either implicitly or explicitly) the relevant standard of care, but rather sets forth the allegations of negligence contained in Rosales’s complaint. The jury was properly instructed on the relevant standard of care, and it was properly left for the jury to determine whether any of the instances of the School’s alleged conduct constituted a failure to comply with the standard of care, i.e., negligence. I would hold that the trial court did not err in giving Instruction No. 22 and affirm the judgment in favor of Rosales. To hold otherwise would be to question the efficacy of ever using former Indiana Pattern Jury Instruction No. 9.03 (or its new equivalent, Model Civil Jury Instruction No. 507).