A key lawyer involved in suing the federal government over damage caused by levee breaches during Hurricane Katrina has been suspended from practice in Louisiana state courts.

The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Joseph Bruno can't practice law for 18 months because of his violation of lawyer-conduct rules during the handling of a lawsuit over an explosion at Shell Oil Co.'s Norco refinery in 1988.

The court suspended Bruno for three years, but deferred 18 months of that punishment. Bruno had already served a suspension in federal court for the same infractions and, since being reinstated, can continue to practice in federal courts, his lawyer said Friday.

A sharply divided Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board had recommended disbarring Bruno.

"He is pleased that the court did not go along with the recommendation that he be disbarred," said Dane Ciolino, who represented Bruno. "He accepts the court's ruling and will abide by it."

A high-profile New Orleans lawyer, Bruno is part of a "levee litigation" group involved in federal lawsuits that seek compensation from insurance companies and the Army Corps of Engineers for New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish residents flooded out of their homes when levees broke in the storm's wake.

Bruno's trouble centered around two infractions:

-- Paying a Shell employee $5,000 in 1991 for inside information about what Bruno believed to be misconduct by Shell in preparing its witnesses for depositions.

-- Not speaking up at an October 1992 hearing when another member of the plaintiffs' legal team told Judge Henry Mentz that the plaintiffs' committee had not paid the Shell employee and continuing to keep mum when another lawyer on the committee reiterated that claim in a post-hearing brief.

On Jan. 4, 1993, Bruno reported his misdeeds to Mentz, prompting the full court to order an investigation. In November 1998, the case was heard by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval of Louisiana's Eastern District of federal court. Duval concluded that Bruno's violations, though "potentially injurious," caused no harm because the case did not go to trial.

What Bruno did, Duval said, was grounded not in malice but in his genuine belief that paying the Shell insider for information "would compensate for Shell's refusal to cooperate."

Duval recommended Bruno get a six-month suspension, but Eastern District judges voted to sideline Bruno from federal practice for a year, a decision upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"He has completely served his federal sentence, so his practice will be uninterrupted in federal court," Ciolino said.

Ciolino said the investigation had languished in state court for some time until Bruno himself pushed for a resolution.

In a toughly worded ruling late last year, a five-member majority of the state's eight-person Disciplinary Board, including the board's three nonlawyers, said the state Supreme Court should remove Bruno from law practice altogether.

"Paying a witness and failing to correct factual misstatements on the record undermine the credibility of the judicial process," they said.

The Supreme Court decided on a lighter punishment. "In fashioning an appropriate sanction in this case, we recognize in mitigation that respondent has no prior disciplinary record in nearly thirty years of practice, has a good reputation in the legal community, suffered the imposition of other penalties and sanctions for his conduct, and has expressed genuine remorse," the court said in an unsigned opinion.

One justice, Jeffrey Victory, dissented, saying the penalty should have been tougher.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)