Email to Bob Herz: “It saddens me that you are a member of my species.”

Francine McKenna was the first to opine (strongly we might add) on the ruling in Kirschner v. KPMG (along with the derivative suit Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana and City of New Orleans Employees’ Retirement System v. PricewaterhouseCoopers) that was announced yesterday.

The New York Law Journal reported on the ruling first:

Ruling on certified questiirschner v. KPMG LLP, 151, and Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, 152—a 4-3 majority held that accountants who allegedly should have detected malfeasance by executives of Refco in Kirschner and American International Group Inc. in Teachers Retirement System cannot be sued under state law.

The Court held that the principles under which the suits were dismissed—in pari delicto and imputation—are “embedded in New York law” and “remain sound.”

Like we said, Francine had some thoughts on this and she did not hold back:

A majority of the New York Court of Appeals bought the self-serving, selfish and unjust arguments of the defendants and their flunky amicus brief toadies supporting criminal corporate fraudsters and, get this, the shareholders of the accounting firms (!!). The New York Court of Appeals abandoned the shareholders and creditors of Refco and AIG for criminals and incompetents.

If I were writing this decision as a novel of corporate cronyism to the extreme in a Utopian nirvana for capitalist parasites, I could not have imagined more contemptible excuses for judicial cowardice.

Those “flunky amicus brief toadies” include the AICPA, the New York State Society of CPAs and the Center for Audit Quality, who argued that our very capital market system was at risk if accounting firms (and other professionals) could be held responsible for fraud perpetrated by management.

We share Francine’s passion for holding accountants responsible for their culpability (plus, claiming “we were duped” does nothing for the industry’s reputation) but the ruling hardly comes as surprise. Judge Susan Phillips Read wrote for the majority:

The speculative public policy benefits advanced by the Litigation Trustee and the derivative plaintiffs to vindicate the changes they seek do not, in our view, outweigh the important public policies that undergird our precedents in this area or the importance of maintaining the “stability and fair measure of certainty which are prime requisites in any body of law” (Loughran, Some Reflections on the Role of Judicial Precedent, 22 Fordham L Rev 1, 3 [1953]). We are simply not presented here with the rare case where, in the words of former Chief Judge Loughran, “the justification and need” for departure from carefully developed legal principles are “clear and cogent” (id.). Finally, to the extent our law had become ambiguous, today’s decision should remove any lingering confusion.”

[…]

We are also not convinced that altering our precedent to expand remedies for these or similarly situated plaintiffs would produce a meaningful additional deterrent to professional misconduct or malpractice.

In other words, these particular cases didn’t present a situation that demonstrated a desperate need for change in the law nor would it prove to be a helpful deterrent of fraud in the future. Bottom-line seems to be that Francine is upset at the majority’s pragmatic attitude but what do you expect from a panel of seven judges? It’s a long shot that you come across more than a couple of judges who are willing to turn years of case law inside out and upside down just because a company went bankrupt or a pension fund lost value.

That being said, there was a very enthusiastic and compelling dissent that basically calls auditors a bunch of pansies when it comes to accepting professional responsibility, “[I]t seems that strict imputation rules merely invite gatekeeper professionals ‘to neglect their duty to ferret out fraud by corporate insiders because even if they are negligent, there will be no damages assessed against them for their malfeasance.’ ” You can check out more over at RTA.

As far as the audit firms are concerned, they have to breathing a huge sigh of relief. Considering all the lawsuits out there, firms are already slowly bleeding to death by paper cuts. If this case had gone the other way, it could very well have been a mortal wound for the firms.

Kirschner v KPMG LLP [NY Court of Appeals]
Third-Party Liability Ruled Out in N.Y. Suits for Corporate Misdeeds [New York Law Journal]
New York Court of Appeals Stands By Corporate Man: In Pari Delicto Prevails [Re:The Auditors]