기업의 소송제기 공시에 대한 시장반응과 감사인의 대응

The situation of a company facing a lawsuit due to a case in litigation serves as an unfavorable factor for a corporation. Therefore, it is expected that a case in litigation, once publicly disclosed, will have a negative impact. However, the filing of a lawsuit merely means that a lawsuit has just started, not that a company will necessarily have a financial loss because of the lawsuit. Once a lawsuit has been disclosed, it is difficult to anticipate whether the company will win or lose the lawsuit. Furthermore, there is a possibility that the lawsuit can be dismissed or that charges won’t be filed. So, the uncertainty the company faces often leads to an immediate response from market. Also, a lawsuit against a company is within the scope of a confirming audit, which analyzes the influence the lawsuit will have on a company, and it should be included in an audit opinion. The influence on the financial statement can also be figured out. This study has been conducted on companies, which were listed on the securities market from 2005 to 2010, in the case of their facing a lawsuit during the “lawsuit disclosures(application).” We manually collect data of lawsuit disclosures from Korea Investor’s Network for Disclosure System(KIND). To verify a hypothesis 1, we use a total of 527 firm-year observations, of which 303 firm-year sample faced defendant. Also, we separate the 303 firm-year sample into monetary lawsuits(N=123) and non-monetary(N=180) lawsuits if the firms announces the amount of lawsuits. For analyses, we used the cumulative abnormal return() measured by market model around the event day(=announcement of lawsuit disclosures) and the cumulative abnormal return measured by market adjusted model(). To verify a hypothesis 2, we use a total of 3,359 firm-year observations. Among them, 4.7 percent of firms(about 159 samples) are under lawsuit and 1 percent of firms(about 35 samples) had the respective lawsuits mentioned in the audit report.