2. The majority rule recognizes that accountants owe a duty of care to third parties who foreseeably rely on audit reports in their business dealings with the audited company.
2. Yet the majority adopts a rule that betrays the expectations of third party users whose reliance makes the audit report valuable to the audited company.
3. Under the majority's rule, the audit report is made a trap for the unwary, because only the most legally sophisticated and well advised will understand that the report will not deliver what on its face it seems to promise: a qualified professional's actual assurance that the financial statement fairly states the financial situation of the audited company. An assurance with no legal recourse is essentially a hoax. Under the rule the majority adopts, any value that third parties place on the unqualified opinion is mistaken, because the law now insists that reliance upon the opinion, no matter how reasonable and foreseeable, is unjustified.