Court Opinion

ID: 9741307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:53:08.786939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:23.314805
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE FREEMAN, specially concurring: The majority narrowly holds that the economic loss doctrine does not bar a tort claim for accountant malpractice. I agree with the result. The majority reaches this result by concluding that a contract for accountant services, like that for attorney services, has some extra-contractual duties, which are not capable of memorialization. The presence of these duties, reasons the majority, distinguishes accountants and attorneys from other professionals, such as architects, where the professional’s obligations may be memorialized in the contract. The rule which the majority here espouses is that "[w]here a duty arises outside of the contract, the economic loss doctrine does not prohibit recovery in tort for the negligent breach of that duty.” (159 Ill. 2d at 162.) That being the case, an accountant, like an attorney, may be liable in tort for the failure to competently perform his extracontractual duties. I agree that the extracontractual-duties analysis provides a proper rationale for the holding in this case. This same rationale was offered in the concurring opinion in Collins v. Reynard (1992), 154 Ill. 2d 48, 52 (Miller, C.J., concurring), with respect to tort claims for attorney malpractice. I write separately, however, because this rationale appears to me to have broader implications than the majority suggests. A professional is one with specialized skill and expertise. In any agreement for professional service, there is an unwritten expectation that the professional will perform competently. And, the failure to exercise a reasonable degree of professional care and skill constitutes malpractice. (159 Ill. 2d at 164.) These general propositions hold true regardless of the nature of the profession or that a tangible product results from the professional-client relationship. To the extent that ex-tracontractual duties are defined as the expectation of "reasonable professional competence,” such duties are present and are implicit in every professional-client contract. Acceptance of the extracontractual-duties rationale clears the way for tort claims in professional malpractice cases in general. The majority, having concluded that the nature of the recovery here is dictated by the existence of extra-contractual duties, is confronted with 2314 Lincoln Park West Condominium Association v. Mann, Gin, Ebel & Frazier, Ltd. (1990), 136 Ill. 2d 302, an architect malpractice case. In Lincoln Park, this court barred the plaintiffs recovery in tort for architectural malpractice, finding that the plaintiffs recovery was confined to contract damages. The majority apparently recognizes that the extracontractual analysis creates an unnatural tension between this case and Lincoln Park. To reconcile the two cases, the majority attempts to distinguish Lincoln Park, by adding another layer to the professional malpractice analysis. The majority holds that because something tangible resulted from the architect-client relationship, the plaintiff was only entitled to contract damages. Because I believe that the architect in Lincoln Park owed the client the extracontractual duty to design the structure competently, I disagree that the majority’s tangible/intangible distinction makes any difference. Even had no structure resulted from the relationship, the extracontractual expectation of competent performance was present, and under the analysis applied in this case, the plaintiffs cause of action could lie either in tort or contract. In my view, Lincoln Park is irreconcilable with this case, and to the extent that its holding is inconsistent with the holding here, it should be expressly overruled. By failing to simply conclude that architects, like any other professional, owe their clients extracontractuai duties, the majority has effectively created the need for a case-by-case determination of which professionals owe such duties. Further, considering that a product resulting from the professional-client relationship may be only incidental to the relationship, the majority’s tangible/intangible distinction is tenuous at best. Under the majority’s analysis, no matter how incidental the tangible end product js to the service provided, the existence of such a product will serve to bar a tort claim for malpractice. In my view, it is sufficient to say that in the context of a professional malpractice claim, where the duty to perform extracontractual obligations competently has been breached, the professional may be liable in tort.