Certified Public Accountant In The Audit Business Civil Liability Study

Certified Public Accountant (CPA), with the name Economic Policeman, has been existed for more than 150 years in the west countries, and more than 20 years in China. While the system of CPA made great contribution to the economy development, a lot of litigation cases have been seen in our society and which should be focused and studied. Since auditing is the core service of a CPA which relating with all other services, this paper will focus on auditing and analyze the civil liabilities of a CPA in the auditing service. Three issues are discussed regarding the civil liabilities of a CPA which are: 1) the nature of the civil liabilities of a CPA; 2) principle of liability attribution of the civil liabilities of a CPA; 3) how to identify the negligence of a CPA in his service.Auditing service of a CPA is of high professional and hence it is necessary to make a brief introduction to the system of CPA and the profession, also the development and relating theories are demonstrated and the origination and development of the legal liabilities of a CPA are studied in the first part.Then this paper analyzes the nature of the legal liabilities of a CPA from the aspect of juridical. The paper concludes that a CPA is an expert and his practice is just the service of an expert, and therefore the liabilities of a CPA should be the expert liabilities. Since many parties would be involved during a CPA' s practice and a CPA will form different relationships with different party, the CPA will be of different legal positions. By concrete demonstration, this paper concludes that a CPA would be responsible for liabilities for breach of contract and liability for tort to the consignee, and a CPA would be responsible for liability for tort to the third party (other interested party). And since it is still a moot issue that who is the third party in our country presently, the writer gives a criterion to determine who the third party is after analyzing the contents of the third party in the west.As to the principle of liability attribution of the CPA, by studying the juridical basis and the history development of the principle, concluding the character of auditing and by comparing it with other theories, the writer gets the conclusion that objective fault principle should be applied in the attribution of liabilities of a CPA. But because auditing is a high professional practice, it could be found that it is an obstacle to decide whether there exist faults of auditing, and which is also the bright spot of the paper that after analyzing the existing difficulties, an expert committee should be formed to decide whether there exist faults of auditing. But a CPA must practice in a CPA's firm, which means that the liabilities of a CPA are not individual liabilities, rather it will involve the CPA' s firm. So there will be a liabilities share between the CPA' s firm and the CPA after the CPA's firm' s liabilities are determined. The last chapter of this paper focuses on this issue and points out that the liabilities share system between the lawyer and the law firm could be a referential system to regulate the relationship between the CPA and the CPA' s firm.