With jury selection underway in a $5.5 billion negligence suit against accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a Miami judge addressed how much liability could be placed on a mortgage lender that crashed along with a bank in a colossal fraud during the housing crash.
The bankruptcy trustee for Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. claims PwC was grossly negligent in its audits of Colonial Bank’s parent company in the years leading up to the Great Recession. Accountants missed a multibillion-dollar fraud that led to the collapse of both the bank and Taylor Bean, its biggest customer, according to the complaint.
