Dawn N. Valentine

Dawn Valentine is a partner in Barger & Wolen’s San Francisco office.  Ms. Valentine practices in the area of commercial litigation, with an emphasis on insurance and reinsurance disputes. Having litigated a broad range of insurance disputes, Ms. Valentine has extensive experience both in providing coverage advice and developing litigation strategy in complex coverage actions involving primary, excess, errors and ommissions and directors and officers policies. Ms. Valentine has also advised both reinsurers and cedents on a variety of issues, including complex arrangements and agreements involving cut through endorsements, reporting requirements, aggregation issues, allocation issues, and scope of coverage generally. Ms. Valentine has also successfully litigated on behalf of ceding companies in their collection efforts against their reinsurers.

Ms. Valentine’s experience extends to the drafing of policy provisions for inclusion in insurance, reinsurance, and retrocession agreements.

Examples of Ms. Valentine’s litigation and non-litigation experience include: representation of excess insurer in major asbestos coverage litigation; representation of insurance company pursuing its agent for fraud; analysis of fraud in the secondary market; class action defense to charges of unfair business practices; large property and business interruption loss claims, for instance from oil refinery accident; liability coverage representation for mass torts including primary and excess, exhaustion, aggregate limits, and contribution; reinsurance disputes involving fronting, pooling, and retrocession agreements.