LANSING, Mich. (Legal Newsline) – Because a couple failed to show an accounting firm owed them a certain standard of care, an appeals court stuck to a ruling that granted the firm’s motion for summary disposition.
On Jan. 9, the State of Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed, for the second time, the ruling in favor of Plante & Moran PLLC.
Robert and Kimberly Broz initially filed their suit the in Otsego Circuit Court in 2012. They alleged malpractice after an IRS audit brought back deficiencies in their tax payments for the years the accounting company prepared their taxes. The Circuit Court granted Plante & Moran's motion for summary disposition because it agreed the cause of action was not ripe and dismissed the case.
The couple appealed the court’s decision, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded it, and the case was dismissed again by the Circuit Court.
The case went to the Supreme Court, which remanded it back to the current appeals court.
The plaintiffs now argue that the trial court should not have required them to raise the standard of care and allege Plante & Moran did not meet it.
Presiding Judge Mark T. Boonstra, and judges Kathleen Jansen and Michael F. Gadola pointed out that the statutes in question – MCL 600.2912 and MCL 600.2962 – do not “identify a standard of care applicable to accountants in action alleging malpractice. … We therefore hold that plaintiffs were required to demonstrate the standard of care and that defendant breached that standard of care to survive summary disposition of their claim of professional negligence (malpractice),” wrote Gadola.
The judges also ruled that while the plaintiffs’ expert, Peter Oettinger, detailed the ins and outs of the plaintiffs’ operations for their companies, he failed to establish a standard of care, or that a standard of care was breached, along with an affidavit associated with the case.
“The trial court therefore did not err in granting defendant summary disposition of plaintiffs’ claim for accounting malpractice,” Gadola wrote.