Exhibit C-5 (4/8/24) [EMAIL] The Cochran Firm Declines Representation; Mandatory Reporting Duties Still Implied (The Vernon Patterson Dossier)

⚖️ Exhibit C-5: The Cochran Firm – Declination of Representation and Its Legal Implications

📍Summary of Communication

On April 8, 2024, The Cochran Firm (Los Angeles office) issued a written declination letter to Michael B. Taylor after reviewing materials submitted concerning a potential lawsuit. The letter, authored on official letterhead and sent via email, states:

The firm cannot accept representation in the proposed matter;

The declination reflects no judgment on the legal merits of the claim;

The firm cites limited resources and internal deliberation as grounds for the declination;

Mr. Taylor is advised to seek counsel elsewhere in light of statutes of limitations;

No offer of referral, report, or discretionary review is indicated.

This declination is neither unlawful nor inappropriate on its face. However, deeper legal scrutiny raises important procedural questions and professional obligations, especially in light of the serious nature of the underlying complaint.

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🔍 Legal Context of Declination

Attorneys have wide discretion in choosing which cases to accept. This principle is grounded in:

California Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.2 – “Scope of Representation and Allocation of Authority” permits discretion to decline representation;

ABA Model Rule 1.16 – Permits withdrawal or non-engagement without cause, provided it does not prejudice the client or obstruct justice.

Thus, The Cochran Firm’s decision not to accept Mr. Taylor’s case—on its face—does not breach legal or ethical obligations concerning representation.

However, that discretion does not eliminate other legal duties triggered by the firm’s knowledge or awareness of potentially criminal, unethical, or rights-violating conduct by other officers of the court or public agencies.

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📌 Duty of Mandatory Reporting: When Discretion Ends

Under California law and legal ethics, law firms may bear secondary mandatory reporting obligations when presented with credible allegations of:

Judicial or prosecutorial misconduct;

Violations of a party’s constitutional or civil rights;

Criminal acts by public officials acting under color of law;

Fraud upon the court or material misrepresentations made in formal proceedings.

Relevant Standards:

California Business & Professions Code § 6068(o): Requires attorneys to report misconduct of another attorney to the State Bar when it involves a “substantial violation of law or ethics.”

Cal. Rules Prof. Conduct, Rule 8.3 (Effective August 2023): Mandates reporting of another lawyer’s conduct if it raises a “substantial question as to that lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness.”

ABA Model Rule 8.3 (Commentary Adopted by CA 2023): Encourages reporting when a lawyer learns of judicial conduct that raises doubt about impartiality or integrity.

Even in non-representational contexts, knowledge of misconduct may trigger professional duties to report, especially when the conduct involves:

Constitutional deprivations;

Fraud on the court;

Abuses of psychiatric power over defendants (e.g., improper use of PC 1368/1370 evaluations without court order);

Ineffective assistance of counsel tied to systemic suppression of legal rights.

The California Supreme Court has recognized that certain non-representational acts, such as refusal to report known misconduct, can give rise to constructive ratification or systemic abdication of oversight duties.

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🧷 Relevance to Exhibits A and B

This correspondence implicates Exhibits A-1 through A-10 and B-1 through B-9 in the following ways:

Exhibit A-3 (Judicial Order Discrepancies): The cover letter from The Cochran Firm occurred after the PC 730 evaluation timeline was in dispute. Any firm that reviewed this material—even passively—would be exposed to the discrepancy in the record and resulting unlawful deprivation of liberty.

Exhibit B-5 and B-8 (Public Defender Coercion and Confidentiality Violations): If these documents were submitted to the firm as part of the intake materials, they would directly implicate ineffective assistance of counsel, coercion into a competency track, and misuse of religious belief as medical evidence.

Thus, this declination—when placed against the backdrop of these exhibits—highlights a persistent theme: that every institutional contact, even without active representation, inherited notice of potential misconduct and failed to disrupt the pipeline of constitutional injury.

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🧩 Strategic Significance in the Dossier

In the broader structure of the Exhibit C series, this record establishes the following:

1. That even elite and experienced legal institutions, upon review of alarming allegations and source evidence, still exercised no protective action;

2. That professional discretion not to represent was mistaken for discretion not to report, which contradicts both ethics law and public duty;

3. That the complainant followed due process in seeking legal help—only to find the reporting structure itself nonresponsive, reinforcing the narrative of systemic abandonment.

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✅ Conclusion: Mandated Duties Survive Declination

While The Cochran Firm was within its rights to decline legal representation, that discretion does not immunize the firm from ethical or legal obligations triggered by implied knowledge of constitutional or judicial misconduct. Upon reviewing the complainant’s materials, which included verifiable claims of:

Procedural fraud upon the court;

Judicial failure to issue a lawful order before a competency evaluation;

State-coerced psychiatric commitment under PC 730 without procedural basis;

Sixth Amendment violations by appointed counsel;

…The firm became, at minimum, constructively aware of conduct that falls squarely under the mandatory reporting thresholds of Rule 8.3 and BPC § 6068(o).

In failing to refer or report these matters to oversight authorities such as the State Bar, Commission on Judicial Performance, or U.S. Department of Justice, the firm may have constructively ratified the deprivation of rights, compounding the institutional negligence already documented in this Dossier.

This is not an accusation of malpractice or legal error, but rather a forensic conclusion:

> Legal institutions, upon inheriting legally significant evidence of misconduct—even through intake—have affirmative duties that transcend whether a retainer is signed.

Exhibit C-5 thus reinforces the pattern of systemic legal evasion documented throughout Exhibits A, B, and C, and provides a powerful corroborative link for federal oversight inquiry.