So here goes…

Regulation, module 21, professional responsibilities:

The Georgian sun beat down on the parched dirt as Sippee Aurora watched his childhood home disappear behind him.  The driver of the wagon cracked the whip over the heads of the horses and dust billowed out from under the wheels, hanging uncertainly in the air.  In the back of the wagon, Sippee turned his attention from the dust and his home to the more pressing matter of the chains on his wrists and ankles.  The sun was heating the metal and making them uncomfortable.

Sippee was a slave.  His mama had been a slave.  He thinks his grandma had been one too, it all just blurred together.  His home he was leaving behind wasn’t really his home.  It was the home of James Aurora, his old master.  His real home was one of those wooden huts near the back of the plantation by the fields.  Sippee hadn’t had much time to say goodbye before being dragged into this wagon, he never even knew he had been sold.  If he knew French, this would be a good time for him to say “C’est la vie.”  Unfortunately, Sippee couldn’t even spell France if you spotted him the first six letters.  Such was the life of a slave.

“Say, Lavie?  You hear me up there?  Any way I can get these chains off now?  They startin to burn me.”

Lavie, the driver, didn’t seem very keen on listening to him and just drove on.  Sippee sighed, slumped against the side of the wagon, and tried to wait things out.

Finally, after maybe an hour or so, Lavie told him to sit up.  “You about on Mr. Ent’s property now.”

“Aren’t I also Mr. Ent’s property?”

“Best not use that tone with him, he whip you good.”

…

Cleetus Ent was forever buying and selling slaves, never really satisfied with what he had but never really taking the time to figure out what they were good at either.  The cotton harvested from his plantation gave him a good enough living but he never really understood much else about how things worked.  He liked to pretend he did though.

“Clee?  You want some lemonade?” his wife asked, walking into his office.

…

Sippee soon learned the rules of the plantation.  Certain duties of his were merely implied, never explicitly stated.  For example, he has to be obedient and he cannot run away.  Other duties were expressly stated, such as the type of field he was the harvest that day [scope of work], how to harvest said field [procedures], and the amount he’s supposed to harvest.  Clee Ent wasn’t an unreasonable man, and he wasn’t expecting a miracle worker when he bought Sippee.

…

One day, when Sippee was working in the fields, some things were stolen from the plantation by a roving band of thieves.  None of the slaves were punished because it’s not their duty to guard the plantation, they just had to harvest it.

…

Some of the punishments Sippee faces are beatings in the event that he really screws up [major breach] and reduced rations when he messes up a little bit.  Sippee first has to be proven negligent first, however, and he will not be beaten randomly.  It must be proven that he screwed up.  So what is proof of Sippee’s negligence?  If he doesn’t act like an average, reasonable slave or if he causes monetary damage to the plantation, it is proof that he can be punished.  This negligence on Sippee’s part must be proven before Sippee can be punished, and these laws that are beaten into him are established as common law.

…

In the case of an escape attempt, he will be beaten severely, and should Sippee escape, anyone can catch him [privity of contract not needed for plaintiff to prove fraud].  In the case of an offense this severe, four things are needed.  Sippee must have acted intentionally [scienter], lied about his actions, [reasonable or justifiable reliance on documents by injured party], and actual damages must have been incurred.  Also, even if Clee Ent is benevolent enough to turn a blind eye and allow Sippee to escape, Sippee cannot avoid punishment by saying his owner allowed him to escape [contributory negligence of client is not a defense available to accountant].

…

When Sippee is hired out to others [Common law liabilities to 3^rd parties]

In the event that Sippee is loaned out to another plantation to help out with their work, he can’t be blamed for bad work by the new plantation owner because he doesn’t own Sippee, Mr. Ent does [accountant can us the defense of no privity, as defined by Ultramares].  But again, if Sippee escapes from this plantation, anyone can catch him.

In some states, Sippee is responsible for bad work, and in cases of escape, he’s screwed regardless.

[Statutory Liability to 3^rd Parties/ Securities Act of 1933]

Some rules that Cleetus Ent has to adhere to is the Securities Act of 1933.  Due to a ripple in space time, laws enacted in the 1900s affect the governance of plantation owners before the Emancipation Proclamation has been passed.  Rather than questioning this, they have simply come to terms with it.  This Act regulates the way Mr. Ent plants his fields, stating that his initial crops must be registered with the SEC.  If he lies about the way his crops are planted, he can be in trouble.  Naturally, Sippee must have a way of getting beaten so here’s how.  Since Sippee is the one that actually plants the crops, harvests the crops, and tells how the crops have been planted, if Sippee lies about this process, then it’s curtains for him.  Who else can beat him if he does this?  The people that purchase the crops can get their licks in as well, should they desire to.  Sippee has to be accused of this within one year of the buyer finding out the report was bad or within 3 years of the planting.

LIABILITIES

What needs to be proved then?  In order to beat Sippee, one must prove that because he messed up in the reporting of crops, money was lost.  You also need to prove that this mistake he made was in the registration statement filed with the SEC.  If these can be proven, Sippee has a lot of explaining to do.

DEFENSE

Sippee has to show that he did his best and that as far as he knew, his reporting of the crops were correct.  He should also show that the guy wanting to beat him (GWTBH) knew the reports were wrong to begin with, or he can prove that the GWTBH’s monetary loss came from

DAMAGES

[Difference between amount paid and market value at the time of suit; difference between amount paid and the sale price; damages cannot exceed price of which security was offered to public; can’t recover decrease in value after the suit]

MISC

[liability to client can also come from negligence in reviewing events after date of certified balance sheet, which is known as an s-1 review.  so if an accountant performed an s-1 review to go over events after the balance sheet date, he’s also liable for that stuff]

[Securities Exchange Act of 1934]

But that idea was sidelined because I couldn’t care less about accounting issues in the world…or had no idea how to satirize them.  So this blog lay in abandonment until a year or so later, I found myself (well, since this is in the present, I guess it should be “find myself”) studying for the CPA.  I can’t make heads or tails of most of the stuff I’m reading and much of it is in one ear and out the other.  Since this situation does not brood well for the rest of my entire working career, I found myself in one of those “o crap” situations.

Recently, I read the book Talent is Overrated by some author.  He had a story about Benjamin Franklin and how he practiced his writing skills by reading some popular periodical and translating what he read into poetry, then back into prose and comparing to see how they matched up.  Inspired by this, I looked at my CPA material and wondered “what if I could turn this into a bunch of short stories, maybe that would force me to understand the material and also help me remember it in a new way.”

And so explains what you are about to read here.