Ernst & Young, L.L.P. v. Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that defendant commits fraud indirectly when it makes false representation to third party with intent or expectation that it be repeated to deceive plaintiff
• holding that intent-to-induce-reliance element of a fraud does not depend on privity, and may be established by a “reason to expect” reliance
• concluding “the reason-to-expect standard requires more than mere foreseeability; the claimant’s reliance must be ‘especially likely’ and justifiable, and the transaction sued upon must be the type the defendant contemplated”
• explaining that a fraud claim requires the plaintiff to prove that he actually and justifiably relied upon the representation
• noting that one element of fraud is that the defendant “knew the representation was false or made it recklessly as a positive assertion without any knowledge of its truth”
• holding accounting firm negated reliance on audit as a matter of law in suit by investor against accounting firm that performed audit for bank for purposes of earlier merger

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).