Free Declaration - District Court of Arizona - Arizona

DECLARATION

I, Steven C. Dawson, states as follows: BACKGROUND 1. 2. That I am one of the attorneys who represented Brett Leavey in this case. I have been licensed to practice law in the State of Arizona since May of

1981. During that year I began performing trial work in criminal law. 3. In January of 1983 I began a civil practice with Calvin Thur which I

continued until 1995. The primary emphasis of this practice was insurance bad faith litigation and I had the responsibility for the trial work of the firm. 4. In 1995 Anita Rosenthal and I began our own law firm and our practice

continued to focus on insurance coverage and insurance bad faith litigation. I have tried over 30 cases to verdict and approximately 25 of these have been representing the plaintiff in insurance bad faith actions. During the 22 years that my practice has focused on insurance bad faith litigation, I have also had extensive involvement on the appellate level. 5. In addition to Arizona, I have represented clients in disputes with their

insurance company in Florida, New Mexico, Indiana and Connecticut and have consulted with lawyers around the country on insurance bad faith matters. I have been asked to speak on these topics at various CLE seminars in and out of the state of Arizona. 6. Barbara Leslie has been a paralegal for approximately 20 years and

worked with Dawson & Rosenthal from 1995 until October of 2004. Carla Parkes has

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been with Dawson & Rosenthal since 1997 and has been a certified legal assistant since 2002. REASONABLENESS OF RATE 7. Our firm has a written contingency fee agreement with the plaintiff in

this action which calls for contingent fees of 40% of recovery and 45% if the matter goes up on appeal after trial. 8. 9. Plaintiff's counsel advanced all of the litigation expenses. The amount of the contingency fee was established as a result of my

familiarity with the contingency fees charged by other lawyers in Arizona and around the country that specialize in this area of the law. For example, based upon my experience with other law firms, I know that contingency fees of 45% of extra contractual damages, including punitive damages, are common. REASONABLENESS OF TIME SPENT AND EXPENSES INCURRED 10. I have reviewed the itemization of tasks performed on this case and the

estimates of time spent in performance of those tasks and believe both to be reasonable. The estimate of time spent is very conservative as much of the work done on this case could not be recaptured for the purpose of assigning estimates of time. An itemized listing of work performed on the case by plaintiff's attorneys and paralegals and estimates of time are attached hereto.

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I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.

Dated this 22nd day of December, 2005.

____s/Steve Dawson____________ Steven C. Dawson

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