Meet Bruce

Bruce is head of the Reinsurance Practice Group and has over 45 years as a trial lawyer and litigator. Bruce was a founding member of Rubin, Fiorella, Friedman, & Mercante LLP prior to it’s merge with GVK. His practice over the course of the last 35 years has focused primarily on litigating and arbitrating reinsurance disputes. Bruce has litigated verdicts and/or Final Award in excess of 200 reinsurance disputes, with a heavy concentration on property and casualty claims and matters of contract interpretation. He has been lead counsel in highly publicized and cutting edge cases. For example: 

• Bruce served as lead counsel to Commercial Union Insurance Company in a federal court trial which resulted in the first judicial determination that the reinsurance doctrine of “follow the settlements” applies to the cedent’s decision to allocate the settlement among insurance policies potentially implicated by the underlying claims. 
• Bruce served as co-lead counsel to a number of insurance and reinsurance companies against a California-based pool manager which was part of the Mission Insurance Group in a consolidated arbitration seeking rescission based on fraud and misrepresentation, and in resisting efforts of the liquidator of Mission Insurance Company to collect reinsurance balances flowing from their pool participations. These proceedings spanned a 10-year period. 

Published decisions in matters in which Bruce served as lead counsel include: 

• Commercial Union v. Seven Provinces lns. Co., 9F. Supp.2d 49 (D. Mass. 1998, aff’d 217 F.3d 33 (1st Cir. 2000); cert. den. 531 U.S. 1145 (2001) 
• National Union v. American Re-Insurance Company, 441 F. Supp. 2d 646 (SDNY 2006) 
• Utica Mutual lns. Co. v. Munich Reinsurance America. Inc., 381 F. Supp. 3rd 185 (NDNY 2019) aff’d 7F. 4th 50 (2d Cir. 2021) 
• Pacific Reinsurance Management Company v. Ohio Re, 935 F.2d 1019 (9th Cir. 1991) 

When not waging battle or assisting clients, Bruce is a fan of college and professional basketball. He played competitively at the Bronx High School of Science and at SUNY Stony Brook. He also enjoys spending time with family.