A Study On Civil Liability Of Misrepresentation Of Accounting Firms

Accounting firms are known as "gatekeepers" of the securities market that can protect the rights and interests of investors,because they can undertake the important task of verifying securities information and ensuring the authenticity,accuracy and integrity of information disclosure of their clients,i.e.the issuers of securities or listed companies,by issuing audit reports for the issuance and listing of securities or in other securities trading activities.The core of information disclosure documents is financial information,which has a great impact on investors’ investment decisions.In the process of issuing the audit report,once the accounting firm makes a false statement and the investor makes an investment decision,the loss of the investor is inevitable.In order to realize the function of the "gatekeeper" of the accounting firm’s securities market,the securities law stipulates that in the case of Securities Misrepresentation,the accounting firm that issues a false audit report due to its fault needs to bear the civil liability for the investor together with its client,which is an important institutional arrangement.However,because the provisions of the Securities Law on the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms are too rough,and there are legislative conflicts with other relevant laws and regulations,the court has great trouble in judicial practice,and there are different judgments in the same case.Combined with the previous experience and drawing lessons from the relevant provisions of foreign countries,this paper focuses on the fault,causality and liability in the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms.The first part puts forward the meaning of false statements of accounting firms and the concept of civil liability,discusses the nature and imputation principle of civil liability,and comes to the conclusion that the theory of tort liability and the principle of fault presumption are the most reasonable conclusions at present,and then discusses the theoretical basis of civil liability,namely "efficient market hypothesis theory" and "fraudulent market theory",Finally,it puts forward the necessity of improving civil liability,including reasonably protecting the rights and interests of investors and regulating the practice of accounting firms.The second part summarizes the legislative status and judicial practice of the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms,and analyzes its existing problems,including the failure to distinguish the negligence of the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms,the rigid identification standard of causality,and the mismatch between the responsibility and the degree of fault.The third part analyzes and evaluates the provisions of the United States and Japan on the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms from the perspective of improving the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms in China.Among them,the dichotomy of expert statements and non expert statements,the dichotomy of identifying causality and the Legislative Transformation from joint and several liability to proportional liability are worthy of reference.The fourth part analyzes the above-mentioned problems encountered by the civil liability of false statements of accounting firms,and puts forward corresponding improvement suggestions: refine the form of negligence,improve the identification standard of causality,including the identification and defense of transaction causality and damage causality,and determine the liability of accounting firms through unified subjective and objective consideration,In order to give better play to its function as a "gatekeeper".