On Civil Liability For Chinese Certified Public Accountant

The CPAs' civil liability is that the public accounting firm bears civil liability when the CPA does harm to the clients or the third party for his false act when he carries out his task. With the broadening of legal knowledge of the public, the CPAs' civil liability becomes more complicated. Generally speaking, there are four requirements of the CPAs' civil liability, and it distinguishes from other liabilities. Using the theories of the nature of the CPAs' civil liability of other countries for reference, CPAs undertake contractual liability to the client and tort liability to the third party.By reference to knowledge of the science of law and economics, the thesis holds that the rule of imputation of the CPAs' civil liability is fault liability, and it should adopt the rule of presumptive fault for false statement in securities market. Correspondingly, it is up to CPAs to give proof in litigations. False auditing report and the CPAs' professional care are important factors for CPAs to bear liability. CPAs use the Independent Auditing Standard as judging grounds, but they should think about its limited function. The system of independent auditing experts roll and experts chosen at random by three parties in practical case can settle the problem of expert authentication of the CPAs' civil liability.The CPAs' civil liability results from many reasons, and other relative bodies should share the liability properly. Meanwhile, the system that the public accounting firm recover the compensation from the CPAs who do harm to the suffer should be set up. CPAs bear proportional liability in the light of the rule of tort of several persons without connection in civil actions against CPAs. The compensative amount is fixed according to specific conditions. Because the relationship between the CPAs' misrepresentation and the plaintiffs' losses is indirect, the CPAs' liability is secondary, and it is reasonable for the public accounting firm to bear liability within 5 years from the beginning of CPAs' issuing the audit reports. We can improve the ability to compensate of the public accounting firm and decentralize the CPAs' risks by some ways.