The lawsuit against PricewaterhouseCoopers was filed more than three years after PwC had concluded its audit work and rendered its opinion for the year in question. The issue for the New York Court of Appeals in Williamson v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, 9 N.Y.3d 1, 840 N.Y.S.2d 730 (2007), was whether PwC’s work on subsequent audits for subsequent years tolled the three-year statute of limitations under the continuous representation doctrine. The Court of Appeals distinguished between ‛a continuing professional relationship,“ which clearly was present, and ‛a course of continuous representation as to the particular problems (conditions) that gave rise to plaintiff's malpractice claims,“ which was not — as exemplified by the fact that all subsequent audits were done pursuant to separate engagement letters, signifying separate representations:

Plaintiff's allegations make clear that for the years in question, the Funds entered into annual engagements with defendant for the provision of separate and discrete audit services for the Funds' year-end financial statements, and once defendant performed the services for a particular year, no further work as to that year was undertaken. Taken together, plaintiff's allegations establish defendant's failures within a continuing professional relationship, not a course of representation as to the particular problems (conditions) that gave rise to plaintiff's malpractice claims. Plaintiff fails to allege that defendant and the Funds explicitly contemplated further representation regarding the audits. Specifically, the Funds never engaged defendant to provide corrective or remedial services (e.g., to reexamine a prior year's financial statements or redo a prior year's audit). Nor were the Funds aware of the need for further representation as to the audits. Thus, the "mutual understanding" required under the doctrine did not exist. Given the Funds' lack of awareness of a condition or problem warranting further representation and the fact that no course of representation was alleged, the purpose underlying the continuous representation doctrine would not be served by its application here.

Because the Court of Appeals reasoned from medical and legal malpractice precedent, the implications of this opinion extend beyond auditor malpractice to these other fields as well.