A reply to Randall E. LaSalle: “The civil justice system and going-concern audit reports: Comments on ‘Auditors’ decision-making under going-concern uncertainties in low litigation-risk environments: Evidence from Hong Kong’ ”

In a dissent from the conclusion reached in Lam and Mensah [Lam, K, Mensah, Y.M., 2006. Auditors’ decision-making under going-concern uncertainties in low Litigation-risk environments: Evidence from Hong Kong. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 25 (6), 706–739], Lasalle has proposed a number of alternative plausible explanations for our findings that Hong Kong auditors issued disclaimer of opinions in a manner associated with the eventual outcome to the clients. We examine these explanations and attempt to relate them to relevant empirical evidence in the literature. We find that none of his plausible explanations is consistent with the limited empirical evidence available. Thus, we continue to believe that a high litigation-risk environment is not a necessary pre-requisite for high quality audits.