Missouri Lawyers Awards 2023: Robert A. Bruce

Partner, Doyle & Bruce LLC

As soon as the 2022 opinion was signed in Poke v. Independence School District, more than 7,000 Missouri employees got a right they had never had. A school district can no longer retaliate against its employees, just like a private employer can’t retaliate against its employees.

Robert Bruce represented the plaintiff and argued the case before the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, in 2021 and before the Missouri Supreme Court in 2022. This was the first time the Missouri Supreme Court had ever been asked to consider this matter.

“The statute that governed this case came into existence in 1974,” Bruce says. “Ten years later, the courts decided that an employee didn’t have the right to a remedy if they were fired for exercising worker compensation rights as an employee of a public entity. The only remedy was asking the court to re-instate them to that job.”

Since joining the firm of Doyle & Bruce LLC in 2017 as its first full-time associate attorney, Bruce has assisted more than 450 employees with various employment issues. “When Mr. Poke first came to us, we told him his case would be a long journey,” Bruce says. “He was open to that, and we took his case in 2020.”

Following the Missouri Supreme Court’s 2022 decision, the case is now back in the trial court, and litigation continues. Bruce expects a trial date to be set in 2023. “Getting rights recognized can be very frustrating,” he says. “We did something in this case that has a lasting effect and righted something that has been wrong for quite a while.”

Bruce also has a personal interest in this case. His mother worked as a school district custodian in Missouri for her entire career before retiring and should have had this protection — even though she never needed it.

A first generation college graduate and first generation lawyer, Bruce values the excellent advice he received from his grandfather: “You have to be able to go home from your job and think about at least one thing you did that day to make someone’s life better or make the world better. If you can’t do that, you’re not working to your full potential.”

Bruce recalls the first time in his career that he resolved a case for a client. He met the person when they had just been fired and had no idea what to do next. Eighteen months later, Bruce was able to get a good result for them and help them begin a healing process. That was the affirmation he needed to assure him that he had chosen the right career path.

“There’s a last chapter to Mr. Poke’s case,” Bruce says. “As long as an employee works for a public employer that is not directly the State of Missouri, they have this right. The courts have not yet said this for State of Missouri employees. This is still an open question. It will eventually come before the court, and that will be the last chapter of this saga.”