Study On Legal Liability Of Asset Appraisal

The asset appraisal industry in China has made rapid progress during the past ten years, playing an increasingly important role in the economy. Recent years, many illegal cases exposed on the securities market have relation to the asset appraisal, directly or indirectly, and all of these cases enhanced the operational risks in asset appraisal gradually. However, China's present theoretical researches on the legal liability of asset appraisal have lagged behind, both the evaluating institutions and the practitioners are lacking in consciousness of risk and responsibility, the legal field holds understandings differ from that of the masses. So, the legal liability has become a hot issue drawing much attention from the theoreticians and practitioners in the field and legal professionals as well. Focused on the relevant laws and regulations at home, after the analyses on a variety of factors influences the composing of legal liability in asset appraisal, the paper argues that the quality-control regulations within an evaluating institution, the professional ethics and qualifications of CPV, the Certified Public Valuers, are internal factors to form the legal liability in asset appraisal, while the confliction of microscopic policies on asset appraisal, the irrational expectations of the masses and the prevalent "deep-pocket" theory are the external factors. The comprehensive and systematic analyses indicate that relevant laws and regulations in China aren't continuous at all, besides, with ambiguous terminologies, elastic and impractical fining amounts or terminals, the laws and regulations often carry out conflicting determinations on liability and punishment, so as to endangering the fairness of themselves. Therefore, the paper proposes that these laws and regulations should go further to be perfected, and criterions be standardized; furthermore, in the field of asset appraisal, subjects and their legal liability, objects and their formations, judging and punishing criterions are all need to be cleared, making the evaluating institutions take the legal liability they deserve. Additionally, to attain healthy and stable development, CPV should strengthen their consciousness of risk and responsibility; the evaluating institutions should reinforce their internal quality-control, draw the professional duty-compensate funds and set up the system of professional liability insurance to improve the civil liability compensating ability of the evaluating institutions eventually.