Courtesy of Pam Martens
Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, PwC Partners In Charge of Oscar Envelopes
PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, is one of the Big Four accounting firms created in 1998 from the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. Its namesakes are more than a century old. Unfortunately, PwC will henceforth be known as the accounting firm that provided presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway with the wrong red envelope at Sunday night’s Oscars. That mistake created a chaotic scene where two producers of the film “La La Land” were initially allowed to give speeches on stage for Best Film, then stunned with the news that “Moonlight” had actually won the award. At one point, producers and casts of both films stood in dazed confusion on the stage.
According to the official report thus far, a PwC partner, Brian Cullinan, mistakenly handed the Best Actress award envelope (Emma Stone for “La La Land”) to Beatty, instead of the envelope for Best Film, leading to Dunaway announcing it as Best Film.
In a YouTube video (see below) made by PwC to celebrate its long history of tabulating votes for the Oscars, the words “Integrity” and “Accuracy” flash upon the screen. But in multiple current court actions, PwC’s integrity and accuracy are being challenged in very serious ways.
One court action is close to the home of the Oscars. The Los Angeles City Attorney, Michael N. Feuer, brought an action against PwC in 2015 on behalf of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). It initially alleged that when PwC submitted a bid proposal to update the forty year old billing and customer care system for the LADWP it “marked the beginning of a pattern of intentional deception, breach of commitments, and an almost endless litany of attempts to deny or cover up those acts or omissions by PwC that is virtually breathtaking in both its scope and its audacity.”
Because of PwC’s intentional misrepresentations and breaches of contract, according to the lawsuit, a chaotic disaster fell upon the public utility: “…the Department was not able to bill some of its customers for more than 17 months, including more than 40,000 of its 400,000 commercial customers, resulting in an $11 million loss in revenue for each month during this period. Moreover, for weeks, LADWP couldn’t bill any of its 1.2 million residential customers at all.” In addition, the complaint goes on, countless LADWP customers were overbilled while others were underbilled, “resulting in an exponential surge in ratepayer complaints, non-payment of bills, and an enormous spike in the aging of accounts receivable.”
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