Torys Litigation Trends piece republished by Canadian Accountant

Canadian Accountant has republished an article that forms part of Torys' 2022 Litigation Trends Report.

Penned by senior associate Rachael Saab and associate Adrienne Oake, the piece looks at the five-year-old Supreme Court of Canada decision in Deloitte & Touche v. Livent Inc. (Receiver of), a case about pure economic loss arising from an auditor’s negligent misrepresentation or performance of a service.

The article considers how negligent misrepresentation claims against professional services firms have evolved in the five years since Livent was decided and how Livent will impact negligence claims against professional services firms in the future.

An excerpt is below:

The decision in Livent focused narrowly on the duty of care auditors owe to their clients and has been applied consistently in that context since. Shortly after Livent, the question of whether an auditor’s duty can extend beyond the client to non-client third parties was answered by the Court of Appeal for Ontario. The Court held—based on the auditor’s limited undertaking in the particular case—that the auditor did not owe a duty of care to non-clients who were not the intended audience for the auditor’s report (and who were found not to have read or relied on the auditor’s representations).

You can read the original piece here.

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