Representative Matters
- Represents clients before state administrative agencies, including the Bureau of Insurance, Bureau of Financial Services, Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection, Office of Securities, the Bureau of Taxation and Department of Transportation, the Secretary of State, the Department of Environmental Protection, and in appellate actions in Maine courts involving state agency rulings.
- Represents numerous clients before the Maine Legislature, including the Maine Auto Dealers Association, AFLAC, Maine Optometric Association, American Insurance Association, Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, Wells Fargo, American Express, Express Scripts, The Toy Industry Association, and the Securities Industry.
- Bruce is one of Maine's leading advocates in the field of insurance, representing insurance companies, re-insurers, self-insurers, Captive companies, MEWAs and producers before the Bureau of Insurance.
- Maintains an active trial practice in state and federal courts, representing insurance companies, automobile dealerships, and other businesses and individuals. Bruce also maintains an active appellate practice, having appeared numerous times before the Maine Supreme Court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. He has represented the pharmaceutical industry in a constitutional challenge to a state price control statute which went to the United States Supreme Court. He also maintains an active plaintiff's practice.
- Was the primary author of Maine's workers' compensation self-insurance laws and regulations. He created Maine's Self Insurance Guarantee Association statute, the first of its kind in the nation. He has obtained regulatory approval for programs for most groups currently authorized to self-insured workers' compensation. These clients include the Maine Auto Dealers Association, the longest standing private group self-insurer in Maine; the Maine Motor Transport Association; the Distributors and Suppliers Group; the Maine Oil Dealers Association; the Maine Forest Products Group and numerous others.
- Authored the Maine Statute, which allows self-insurers to reinsure their own Worker's Compensation exposures. He created the first self-insured reinsurer in Maine.
- Bruce was one of the authors of Maine's Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangements statute. Bruce secured Certificates of Approval for the banking and automobile industries to operate Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangements. He also represents other groups both in Maine and Northern New England interested in this health insurance alternative, and has secured legislation authorizing a multistate MEWA. Bruce has also authored legislation expanding the availability of MEWA's to groups formed on a geographic, rather than an association basis.
- Bruce amended Maine's Captive Insurance Law to allow the formation of health captives and has secured regulatory approval for the Maine Wellness Association Captive, the first of its kind.
- He is the primary author of several of Maine's franchise laws, including the Automobile Dealer-Manufacturer, Farm Machinery, Power Equipment, Machinery and Appliances, and Recreational Vehicles, Snowmobiles and All-terrain Vehicles franchise laws.
- Bruce is the primary author of a number of provisions in Maine's insurance code.