The Study Of The CPA's Third-party Liability From The View Of Interest Measurement

Currently, as the false and fraud cases continue to emerge in the investment and securities market, in order to protect the third-party's interest and to ensure a healthy career development of the civil audit, an upsurge of studying the issue of the certified public accountant's liability has been set off in both academia and judiciary. In the past, scholars' discussions on the issue of certified public accountant's liability were mostly restricted to the contract-relation. At present, scholars also have different opinions in their studies of the certified public accountant's third-party liability. In addition, the relevant legal provisions and principles are too simple, and some of the provisions are even inconsistent with each other. Actually, when the false audit is made in a listed company's financial statement, the biggest victim will certainly be the numerous investors. In our country, the certified public accountants who made such mistakes are mostly be punished in an administrative way. Even if the accountant is sued for civil damages, the case will be hampered in its admissibility and judgement because of the inconsistent cognitions and ambiguous defining ways of some factors, namely, the scope of the third-party, the false statement, fault, causality, the main body who bears the responsibility and the way of bearing responsibility. Obviously, it is detrimental to make up for losses of the vast number of investors and to ensure the normal development of the CPA practitioners. Thus, it is especially important to study the CPA's third-party liability in our country. Based on the analysis of the status quo of the development of CPA's third-party liability, this paper advocates the CPA's third-party liability should be analyzed from the view of interest measurement, and it proposes that the reasonable definition of the relevant elements in the system of CPA's third-party liability should be made from both legislative and judicial level so as to achieve a balance among all the interest groups in this system and help them achieve the co-coordinated development.