Examiner liability
The auditor liability is a branch of auditing . It describes the possible consequences of willful and negligent breaches of duty when conducting an audit. Legal regulations can be found in Section 323 HGB . There may be violations of the statutory provisions on auditing, of the principles of proper auditing and of professional duties relevant to the audit.
Auditor Liability
The auditor's liability is regulated as internal liability in ( § 323 Paragraph 1 Clause 3 HGB). This states that the auditor is liable for the damage incurred and must reimburse it if he intentionally or negligently breached his obligation to conduct an impartial and conscientious audit ( Section 323 (1) sentence 1 HGB).
The strict liability ( strict liability system ) can be regarded as a very strict prison system, as the auditor for each error must which has remained liable, regardless of whether he has properly considered in the implementation of their audit or not. This implies the assumption that there is always an incentive for the investors who hire the auditor to initiate a lawsuit if errors become known. Since all costs incurred have to be borne by the auditor, bringing a lawsuit is completely risk-free for the investors.
However, should it be the case that each party has to bear its own procedural costs, as is the case in the USA, for example , a cost-benefit analysis of the plaintiffs must be carried out before a procedure is initiated .
The fault liability ( negligence system ) but is it more prevalent liability system. Should errors become known, it demands that the examiner is at fault, so that liability consequences can apply against him. In order to determine fault, it is necessary to compare the target actions determined by the principles of a proper final audit when carrying out the audit with his actual actions.
Contrary to strict liability, it follows from the negligence system that the detection of errors in the audit does not automatically lead to the same positive expectation for a court proceeding that is advantageous for the investors. Only if the auditor can actually prove indebtedness is there a positive probability of possible compensation payments.
A distinction must be made as to whether the auditor had precise or imprecise audit principles before starting his audit of the company's balance sheet. As can be seen from the terms, precise principles result in a clear level of optimal testing. Imprecise principles give a court more leeway for assessment when examining the correctness of the examination carried out. So here the court and its decision is the crucial point on which expectations of compensation payments for investors depend.
literature
- Martin Richter: Chapter III. Examiner liability. in: Theory and Practice of Auditing II. Auditing and Economic Theory - Examination Market - Examination Methods - Formation of Judgments. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-503-04823-5 , p. 61ff.
- Alfred Wagenhofer , Ralf Ewert: Examiner liability and examination policy. in: External corporate accounting. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-540-43754-1 , pp. 425-468.
- Friederike Schattka: The Europeanization of auditor liability . A legal and economic analysis. Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-16-151957-4 .
- Erich Pummerer, Marcel Steller, Julia Baldauf: Examination quality, examiner liability and risk aversion. An analytical consideration of the importance of risk aversion for exam quality. in: Schmalenbach's journal for business research. Handelsblatt Fachmedien, Düsseldorf 2013, ISSN 0341-2687 , ZDB -ID 10863989 (Volume 65. 2013, 1, pp. 32-59.)
Web links
- Ralf Ewert: Economic analysis of the new EU recommendations on auditor liability and independent inspections. on extrw.univie.ac.at (PDF)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Third-party liability of the auditor under applicable law ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at jura.uni-hamburg.de, accessed on May 16, 2014. (PDF, p. 20ff.)
- ↑ strict liability on ruessmann.jura.uni-sb.de (basic model and case study)
