We examine how jurors' negligence judgments and attorneys' out-of-court settlements are differently impacted by two features of a materially misstated accounting estimate—the amount of estimate uncertainty and whether the misstated account is disaggregated into its own line-item or aggregated with other accounts into a single financial statement line-item. We predict and find that jurors and attorneys react to estimate uncertainty in opposite directions under common conditions. This finding is important because when jurors' judgments and attorneys' settlements differ, research into juror judgments alone may not capture a complete picture of auditor liability because the vast majority of audit litigation is resolved by attorneys in out-of-court settlement without ever going to trial. Consistent with attribution theory, results from our first experiment show that jurors hold auditors more responsible for misstatements of lower estimate uncertainty when the misstated account is disaggregated, as opposed to misstatements that are of higher uncertainty and/or aggregated with other, accurate accounts. However, in a second experiment we find that attorneys negotiate auditor settlements under the incorrect assumption that jurors will hold auditors more responsible for failing to prevent misstatements of higher uncertainty. Our results illustrate that accounting research should not focus solely on juror judgments in the study of how specific factors impact auditor liability, and that attorneys would benefit from a better understanding of juror decision making.

中文翻译：

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审计师疏忽诉讼中高估计不确定性的影响*

我们研究了陪审员的过失判决和律师的庭外和解如何受到重大错报会计估计的两个特征的不同影响——估计不确定性的数量以及错报账户是否被分解为自己的项目或与其他帐户合并为一个财务报表项目。我们预测并发现陪审员和律师会在常见情况下对相反方向的不确定性做出反应。这一发现很重要，因为当陪审员的判决和律师的和解不同时，仅对陪审员判决的研究可能无法全面了解审计师的责任，因为绝大多数审计诉讼都是由律师在庭外和解中解决的审判。与归因理论一致，与具有较高不确定性和/或与其他准确账户汇总的错报相反，当错报账户被分解时，估计不确定性较低。然而，在第二个实验中，我们发现律师在协商审计师和解的错误假设下，认为陪审员会让审计师对未能防止更高不确定性的错误陈述承担更多责任。我们的研究结果表明，在研究特定因素如何影响审计师责任时，会计研究不应仅仅关注陪审员的判断，而且律师将从更好地理解陪审员决策中受益。