[The following paragraph is effective for fiscal years beginning before December 15, 2024. See PCAOB Release No. 2024-004. The paragraph is deleted effective for fiscal years beginning on or after December 15, 2024. View AT Section 101  here.]

Cooley on Torts, a legal treatise, describes the obligation for due care as follows:

Every man who offers his services to another and is employed assumes the duty to exercise in the employment such skill as he possesses with reasonable care and diligence. In all these employments where peculiar skill is requisite, if one offers his services, he is understood as holding himself out to the public as possessing the degree of skill commonly possessed by others in the same employment, and if his pretentions are unfounded, he commits a species of fraud upon every man who employs him in reliance on his public profession. But no man, whether skilled or unskilled, undertakes that the task he assumes shall be performed successfully, and without fault or error; he undertakes for good faith and integrity, but not for infallibility, and he is liable to his employer for negligence, bad faith, or dishonesty, but not for losses consequent upon mere errors of judgment.^fn 8