Econ Corp Fi

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CASE 1.4 HEALTH MANAGEMENT, INC. Synopsis This case profiles an imaginative accounting fraud orchestrated by two top executives of Health Management, Inc. (HMI), a New York-based pharmaceuticals distributor. The HMI fraud is noteworthy because it led to the first major test of an important federal statute, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA), that was intended to alleviate the growing burden of class-action lawsuits filed against accounting firms and other third parties under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. (The PSLRA amended key provisions of the 1934 Act.) The PSLRA makes it more difficult for plaintiffs to successfully “plead” a case under the 1934 Act, that is, to have such a lawsuit proceed to trial. Among other provisions in the PSLRA is a proportionate liability rule. Under this liability standard, a defendant that is guilty of no more than “recklessness” is generally responsible for only a percentage of a plaintiff’s losses, the percentage of those losses produced by the defendant’s reckless behavior. HMI’s former stockholders filed a class-action lawsuit against BDO Seidman, HMI’s former audit firm. The plaintiff attorneys attempted to prove that the BDO Seidman auditors had been reckless during the 1995 HMI audit, which prevented them from discovering the large inventory fraud carried out by Clifford Hotte, HMI’s CEO, and Drew Bergman, the company’s CFO. The plaintiff attorneys repeatedly pointed to a series of red flags that the BDO Seidman auditors had allegedly overlooked or discounted during the 1995 audit. Additionally, the plaintiff attorneys charged that a close relationship between Bergman and Mei-ya Tsai, the audit manager assigned to the 1995 HMI audit engagement team, had impaired BDO Seidman’s independence during the 1995 audit. Bergman had previously been employed by BDO Seidman

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