A Study On The Civil Liability Of Certified Public Accountants Toward The Third Party

The CPA vocation of our country has a development of morn than 20 years since it renewed in 1981. At first, CPA examines the yearly account report forms and capital devotion only for foreign capital enterprises. But up to the present time, they provide various services to stock companies, aggregative companies and other corporations according to the laws, for example auditing, validating capital, evaluating assets and consulting administration, which indicate the CPA vocation exerts very important function. But in the near future, a great lot of misstatement by the stock companies and the accountant offices is attended widely. Shocked by a series cases such as the Enron case and the case of "Yingguangxia", the public begins to question the credibility of the CPA and focus on the specific issue of the civil liability of CPA.In china, the only few legal provisions concerning the civil liability is essentially useless due to lack of feasibility. The protection to the third party is not resolved. This paper mainly focuses on the civil liability of CPA to the third party. It consists of 5 parts: the nature of the civil liability; the standard of duty and the burden of proof; constituting elements of civil liability; the damage compensation; the rationalization proposal about the pivil liability.This paper firstly discusses the nature of the civil liability of CPA to the third party. To definitude the nature is the basis of to definitude the standard of duty and constituting elements of civil liability. There are two theories which are applied in the world: tort liability and contract liability. I agree to apply tort liability based on the expert'attention obligation and the third party'right of knowing the inside story.The standard of duty is presumed to be negligent, and the burden of proof is accordingly shifted to the defendant, based on the presumption of fiduciary between auditors and the third party, to lighten the quote obligation of the third party,because the third party is faced with the difficulty of quoting. CPA must prove the existence of excusing duty if he wants to gain the case.About the elements of the civil liability of CPA to the third party, there are different byelaw and viewpoints between countries and scholars. I think it has four elements: misfeasance; negligence; damages; and causation(causal link between the defendant's negligence and the damages).And the paper mainly focuses on negligence and causation.Concerning the burden of damage compensation, I analyze the main body of liability, which is not clearly prescribed in our law. To my way of think, the accountant office should take ori the outside obligation, then went behind the CPA'duty. The compensation should set up compensation limitation such as the attorney law and the compensation extension should be limited in actual loss. On the sum, CPA will take on different duty: implicative duty or complementary duty, according to intent or misfeasance.At last, the author brings forward some proposal of perfecting the civil liability system of CPA to the third party such as building the special suit time, the system of identifying auditing technique, the liability insurance of CPA, strengthening the vocation supervise.