Facts
In 1924 the auditors of Touche Niven (Touche, Niven & Company) gave the rubber importer, Fred Stern and Company, an unqualified audit certificate, having failed to discover that management had falsified entries to overstate accounts receivable. The auditors knew that the accounts when certified would be used to raise money and for that purpose supplied 32 certified and serially numbered copies: p. 442. On the faith of one of those copies, given to it on its demand, the plaintiff, Ultramares Corporation, lent Fred Stern and Company money. Stern declared bankruptcy in 1925. Ultramares sued Touche Niven for the amount of the Stern debt, declaring that a careful audit would have shown Stern to be insolvent. The audit was found to be negligent, but not fraudulent. The judge set this finding aside based on the doctrine of privity, which protects auditors from third party suits. An intermediate appellate court reinstated the negligence verdict. The case then went to the New York Court of Appeals, Judge Benjamin Cardozo presiding.
Read more about this topic: Ultramares Corporation V. Touche
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)