john@gmhatlaw.com
(504) 456-8600
John W. Houghtaling, II
John Houghtaling is managing partner and majority owner of Gauthier, Murphy & Houghtaling LLP, a law firm with a legacy that spans half a century. The firm famously paved the way to the $246 billion U.S. tobacco settlement in 1998, and since then has won settlements and verdicts in an additional $4.8 Billion in litigation. Houghtaling specializes exclusively in Property Insurance Claims. As of the first quarter of 2021, he leads the firms Claim Management team that is processing more than $3 Billion dollars of property and loss claims for some of the largest property owners in the nation.
Houghtaling began his career in 1996 moving boxes of files for $8 an hour in the Gauthier & Murphy Firm. At the time, Gauthier & Murphy was leading a coalition of 100 law firms against the U.S. tobacco industry. Named senior partners, Wendell Gauthier and Bob Murphy took Houghtaling out of the file room and promoted him to a law clerk in 1997, and as an attorney in 1998. Within his first year of practice Houghtaling became the firm’s top earning associate. He had a string of wrongful death and product liability victories that have set records in Louisiana including a $4.3 million marine wrongful death settlement in 1999, and a $6.25 million settlement for a local New Orleans business in a breach of contract action in 2005. Additional recoveries include $7 million in one of the largest personal injury settlements in Louisiana, $5.25 million in a multi-death fatality, $4.7 million for a drunk driver fatality in in 2004. He also headed the expert discovery and case development that led to a $49 million personal injury verdict in Taylor vs. American Home Insurance.
In 2005, Houghtaling would be featured on the front cover of City Business Magazine in an article entitled, "Famed N.O. Practice Ruled by New Lawyer,” describing how within 8 years Houghtaling rose from the file room to managing partner and majority owner of the firm.
Under Houghtaling’s leadership, the firm, Gauthier Murphy & Houghtaling moved from general litigation into a firm that specialized in Property Loss Claims. Houghtaling now leads the firm’s Third Party Administration of property insurance claims for property owners throughout the nation. The firm is currently processing more than $3 Billion Dollars of property loss and damage claims for property owners across the United States and Europe.
In 2020 the Wallstreet Journal, Bloomberg News and Business Week all featured Houghtaling in Page One articles profiling Houghtaling’s national leadership first party insurance claim management and litigation. In 2014, Houghtaling's career was featured in an hour long CNN documentary episode of Inside Man with Morgan Spurlock. In addition to CNN, Houghtaling’s career has been featured in a documentary on Frontline, and appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Fox News, and more than 100 print and TV media. One of Houghtaling’s high profile corporate fraud cases against a U.S. billionaire served as the basis for the 2017 Hollywood legal thriller, Misconduct, staring Al Pacino as the New Orleans lawyer, and Anthony Hopkins.
Houghtaling law practice focuses on the negotiation and litigation of property development and indemnity contracts. In his Property Indemnity Contract Practice (Property Insurance) he works with individual property owners at every level, from individual homeowners to some of the nation’s largest Real Estate Investment Trusts and Property Management and Ownership Groups. His practice focuses on property casualty solutions, the legal and forensic documentation of property damages, the contracting with mitigation and recovery contractors, and the processing of indemnity insurance for business interruption and property loss. Outside of Insurance, Houghtaling’s practice as a lawyer, developer, and executive has a focus in complex infrastructure development strategy, and contracts in the gas and energy sector.
first party insurance litigation
For the past two decades Houghtaling has been at the forefront of some of the largest litigation battles in the aftermath of catastrophic losses. He has used the knowledge of property loss litigation to help clients avoid disputes through proper claim processing for property owners. Houghtaling currently represents some of the largest property owners in North America, including the nations largest Real Estate Investment Trusts, Property Ownership and Management Groups.
Property Insurance
Houghtaling took over the Gauthier Murphy firm just six months before Katrina hit the firm’s founding office in New Orleans. In the aftermath of the storm, Houghtaling served as special counsel to the Attorney General of Louisiana in the multi-billion dollar litigation of policyholder rights in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. His firm uncovered how carriers were systematically lowballing claims of property owners, and secured hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance funds to rebuild thousands of properties in several states.
After 9 figure recovery for property owners in Hurricane IKE, Houghtaling was appointed in 2014 as Plaintiffs Liaison to manage the litigation in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Houghtaling personally uncovered and brought to the attention of the Federal Court, widespread fraud within the NFIP Insurance program. His representation of over two thousand property owners led the US Government to admit that carrier third parties committed fraud to underpay storm victims. The national scandal resulted in a Federal takeover of Superstorm Sandy property claims and the reopening of over 144,000 property claims. Houghtaling’s work led to an additional 400 million dollars being recovered by property owners. Federal fraud hearings initiated by Houghtaling let to a million dollars in personal fines being levied against Houghtaling’s opposing counsel and the defense firms that helped coverup fraudulent engineering reports used to deny Houghtaling’s clients. His work in Superstorm Sandy led to hearings against the carriers in the US Senate and the exposure of “Carrier Engineering Fraud” that has been widespread in the US since Hurricane Katrina. https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2019/11/27/294291.htm Houghtaling’s work had been the subject of Frontline documentary, "The Business of Disaster," on 60 Minutes, https://youtu.be/hAywX5Zz4r4. CBS Evening news and has been featured on CNN's Inside Man https://youtu.be/34pjuvD4_oU. and in hundreds of national print media outlets.
In 2020, Houghtaling’s national leadership role in first party insurance litigation was profiled on the front Page of the Wallstreet Journal, Bloomberg News and Business week, as he led the national fight against the insurance industry over the denial of Business Interruption Insurance in the aftermath of the Covid 19 pandemic. On March 16th 2020, Houghtaling filed the first Covid-19 lawsuit.
Houghtaling founded a political action committee a political and civil action initiative entitled Business Interruption Group (BIG) with a group of Houghtaling’s clients, celebrity chefs lead by Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, Wolfgang Puck, Jean-George Vongerichten, and Jerome Bocuse, Houghtaling’s client Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and thousands of businesses and business groups such as the Times Square Alliance , The New York Hospitality Alliance, the James Beard Foundation, The National Independent Venue Association and The Independent Restaurant Coalition.
He is the only attorney in Louisiana who has ranked as one of City Business Magazine’s top 50 lawyers in New Orleans for five consecutive years, and he was named Louisiana SuperLawyer from 2010 through 2018.
Personal Injury
Houghtaling has had a string of wrongful death and product liability victories that have set records in Louisiana including a $4.3 million marine wrongful death settlement in 1999, and a $6.25 million settlement for a local New Orleans business in a breach of contract action in 2005. Additional recoveries include $7 million in one of the largest personal injury settlements in Louisiana, $5.25 million in a multi-death fatality, $4.7 million for a drunk driver fatality in in 2004, and in 2015 he headed the expert discovery and theory that led to a $49 million personal injury verdict in the case of Taylor vs. American Home Insurance.
Contacts: Energy & Corporate Development
In addition to his law practice, Houghtaling continues to lead companies and developments in the energy sector contracts.
From 1998-2004, he was lead counsel in the development and later litigation over the ownership rights of the 144MW Nejapa Power Plant, the first IPP power plant in El Salvador. In 2003, he won a $12 million settlement for a local Louisiana business due to land contamination.
In 2010, Houghtaling became the CEO of Ocean Therapy Solutions, an oil service company he founded with business partner, Kevin Costner. In the aftermath of the BP Horizon oil spill, Houghtaling secured a $167 million contract with Houghtaling and Costner's company to deployed 32 centrifuge devices on vessels designed by Edison Chouest Offshore. Houghtaling also served as special legal counsel to BP for state and Federal relations in the aftermath of the spill.
In 2014, Houghtaling was retained to negotiate a dispute that involved the largest trucking supply company and its largest customer. Within 45 days Houghtaling was able to negotiate a conclusion to a dispute and ending what had become a national scandal in the trucking fuel supply industry.
In 2014, Houghtaling partnered with Roman Abromovich, Alexandar Abromov, Konstantin Nikolav, and other well know titans of industry (a group that would later involve John Raymond, and Jim Glickenhaus) and raised over 1 Billion dollars in contingent capital to co found American Ethane Company, to engineer, permit, construct an operate a 10 million ton Ethane Export Terminal in the gulf coast. Houghtaling negotiated joint venture agreements, Front End Engineering and Development Studies, and various joint venture agreements, with General Electric, Foster Wheeler, AMEC, and Entergy Transfer Partners. The Front End Engineering and Development Study of American Ethane’s Terminal, presently located in Beaumont Texas, was competed in March of 2015.
On November 9, 2017, Houghtaling as CEO and co-founder of American Ethane signed a $26 Billion dollar deal with China in the presence of US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. http://youtu.be/77j1wtHizLY. The deal was the televised as the feature trade deal of the US/China Trade Summit and exists as the largest conditionally binding gas deal between the US and China in History. Since that time Houghtaling has been the principal party negotiator in executed deals for development, engineering, procurement, construction, permitting, supply and dept and equity structures in contractual amounts that exceed $72 Billion dollars. In 2019 Houghtaling helped negotiate the engineering, development, classification, and construction of a new ultra large class of ethane gas carrier to support American Ethane’s cargos to China. The 2019 Gastec Convention, featured an announcement of Houghtaling’s ship deal, by ABS, the global leader in classification of gas carriers, and China Merchants Group, the worlds largest shipbuilder, for the development, classification, and building of 17 next generation of ULEC Ultra Large Ethane Carriers, to support American Ethane’s Cargos to China. https://www.americanethane.com/2019/09/19/abs-and-aec-collaborating-on-newbuild-vlec-fleet-project-will-order-the-biggest-and-most-advanced-gas-carrier-designs-under-development/. To reflect the deal Houghtaling negotiated and initiated with his co founders of American Ethane, this new vessel was given the founding name of “Magnolia Class” in honor of Houghtaling’s home state of Louisiana.
Contacts: Energy & Corporate Development
Houghtaling has raised and donated to civil and charitable campaigns for his entire carrier, having chaired more than 250 fundraisers in the last 20 years. The bulk of Houghtaling’s charity work has been focused in the sectors of education, advancement of minorities, law enforcement and animal welfare. In 2020 Houghtaling made a twenty year endowment to the 501C4 group the American Policyholder’s Association, a group he founded that works with Attorney Generals across the US and supports local law enforcement and Special Investigation Units that target criminal carrier side insurance fraud: www.apassociation.org.
https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2019/11/27/294291.htm. Houghtaling currently sits on the board of an HCBU, Simmons College.
John Houghtaling is married to Yulia Timonina Houghtaling, and domiciles in New Orleans with their two children Alisa and Luke.
● 2/28/05, CityBusiness Magazine, Cover: “Famed N.O. Practice Ruled by New Lawyer”
● 3/29/05, Times Picayune, Chris Rose article and interview, “Law Firm Celebration rolls out the Red Carpet with KC & Sunshine Band"
● 12/2009, New Orleans Living Magazine, Cover: “John Houghtaling is Making His Mark”
● 12/15/2009, New Orleans Living TV, “Executive Profile: John Houghtaling”
● 2005, CityBusiness Magazine, “Leadership in Law, Top 50 Lawyers”
● 2006, CityBusiness Magazine, “Leadership in Law, Top 50 Lawyers"
● 2007, CityBusiness Magazine, “Leadership in Law, Top 50 Lawyers"
● 2008, CityBusiness Magazine, “Leadership in Law, Top 50 Lawyers"
● 2009, CityBusiness Magazine, “Leadership in Law, Top 50 Lawyers"
● 1/2010, SuperLawyers Magazine, re: SuperlawyersRecognition bios
● 1/2011, Superlawyers Magazine, Superlawyers Recognition
● 1/2013, SuperLawyers Magazine, re: SuperlawyersRecognition bios
Oil & Gas, Energy Business
● 5/14/2010, WWL Eyewitness Morning News at 6 AM; WGNO ABC 26 News at 6:30 PM re: Oil Spill Clean up Machine
● 5/18/2010, WDSU New Channel 6 at 10pm; WVUE Fox 8 at 9pm; and WGNO ABC 26 News at 10pm, re: Ocean Therapy Solutions
● 5/19/2010, WVUE Fox 8 at 9PM, re: Clean Up Solutions – Doug Suttles
● 5/19/2010, NewYorkTimes.com, “Ocean Therapy Solutions: If You Build It…”
● 5/19/2010, NYPost.com, “Kevin Costner’s Machine to Help Clean Up Gulf Oil Spill: Report”
● 5/20/10, ABA Journal, “Kevin Costner & Trial Lawyer Partner Come to BP’s Aid With Oil Spill ‘Vacuum Cleaner’”
● 5/23/10, The London Times, “Kevin Costner’s Clean-Up Operation”
● 6/2010 - CNN News Room re: Ocean Therapy Solutions
● 6/2010, FNC Fox & Friends at 7 AM re: Ocean Therapy Solutions
● 6/2010, WVUE Fox 8 at 5 PM re: Ocean Therapy Solutions
● 6/2/2010, CBS Evening News at 5:30 PM re: BP Suggestions.
● 6/3/10, The New York Times, “Oil Leak Inspires Novel Ideas”
● 6/18/2010, WWL Eyewitness News at 6p.m.; WDSU News Channel 6 at 5p.m.; WVUE Fox 8 at 9 p.m.; WGNO ABC 26News at 10p.m. re: Ocean Therapy Solutions
● 8/2010, WVUE Fox 8 at 6 AM re: BIRDS Fundraiser
● 5/14/2010, WDSU.com, “Actor Kevin Costner Helps Fight Oil Spill”
● 5/19/2010, NYDailyNews.com, “Gulf Oil Spill: Kevin Costner Donates ‘Ocean Therapy’ Invention to Clean Oil From Sea; BP OK’s Tests”
● 5/20/2010, Mediaite.com, “Kevin Costner’s Oil Separating Centrifuge Will Save The Gulf Of Mexico”
● 5/24/2010, MyFoxLa.com, “Kevin Costner’s Oil Spill Clean-Up Machines Ready”
● 6/1/2010, HealthWorld.net, “A Healthier World: Kevin Costner’s Waterworld Part 2 – Cleaning up the BP oil spill”
● 6/9/2010, MotherJones.com, “If You Spill It, He Will Come”
● 6/10/2010, The Denver Post, “Costner Touts His Oil Mop-Up Machine On Hill”
● 6/20/2010, CleanEnergyNews.blogspot.com, “Ocean Therapy Solutions: Providing Global Solutions for Oil Recovery”
● 8/25/2010, UCLA Today, “Engineering Team Optimizes New Device to Remove Oil From Gulf Waters”
● 9/2010, WWL Eyewitness Morning News at 6 AM and WDSU News Channel 6 at 10PM and WVU
Property Insurance
● 8/21/06, WWL News re: Katrina Insurance Lawsuits
● 8/23/06, WWL News / WDSU News re: Katrina Insurance Lawsuits
● 11/17/06, WDSU News re: Insurance Lawsuits
● 8/2/07, WDSU News Channel 6 at 6:00PM & 9:00PM re: Insurance Ruling
● 8/3/07, WDSU New Channel 6 at 12:00PM re: Insurance
● 8/13/07, CityBusiness Magazine, “7,000 Katrina Cases Filed”
● 9/12/07, WDSU News Channel 6 at 6:00PM, and WVUE Fox 8 at 5:00PM & 9:00PM re: Insurance Appeal
● 4/8/08, WWL News / WVUE Fox 8 re: Lafayette Insurance Ruling
● 9/22/08, WDSU News re: Insurance Company Paying for Evacuation Expenses
● 11/29/2012 - Village Tattler, “John Houghtaling Speaks at Hurricane Sandy Recovery Night”
● 11/30/2012, Town of Huntington, “Building Department Open Dec. 1 to Process Sandy-Related Applications”
● 11/30/2012, HuntingtonPatch.com, “Experts Offer Tips on Hurricane Recovery”
● 12/2/2012, Newsday.com, “Tips Offered on Rebuilding After Sandy”
● 1/8/2013, PRWeb.com, “Hurricane Katrina Lawyer John W. Houghtaling to Share Knowledge About Fighting Insurance Companies in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy”
● 1/8/2013, Benzinga.com, “John Houghtaling Invited to Speak in Long Beach about Fighting Insurance Companies”
● 1/9/2013, Long Beach Patch, “New Orleans Attorney to Offer Tips on Hurricane Recovery”
● 1/10/2013, Long Beach Herald, “Residents Learn the Ropes: New Orleans Attorney Shares His Expertise with Hundreds”
● 1/10/2013, NBC 4, “Long Beach Hurricane Victims Offered Insurance Advice”
● 1/10/2013, YouTube.com, “Hurricane Sandy Insurance Claims Info Presentation”
● 1/16/2013, LongBeachHerald.com, “Residents Learn the Insurance Ropes”
● 7/29/2013, CrainsNewYorkBusiness.com, “Sandy-claims deadline nears”
● 11/29/2013, Newsday, Gulf Coast firms help more than 1,000 New Yorkers with post-Sandy suits
● 6/1/14, Morgan Spurlock Inside Man on CNN at 10 pm. EST., “Income Inequality and the American Dream”
● 7/30/14, Law360.com, “Gauthier Fends Off Conflict Issue in Sandy Coverage Suits”
● 10/16/14, E&E Publishing, LLC. “Lawyers allege insurance fraud is part of the big mess left by Superstorm Sandy.”
● 2/17/15, InternationalBusinessTimes.com, “Hurricane Sandy Lawsuit Battle: Homeowners Take On Insurers Claiming 'Secretly' Altered Engineering Reports”
● 3/1/15, CBS 60 Minutes documentary, “The Storm After The Storm”
● 3/13/15, InternationalBusinessTimes.com, “Hurricane Sandy: Four Class Action Lawsuits Allege Insurers Manipulated Software to Underpay FEMA Flood Claims”
● 3/13/15, Newsday.com, “New Sandy suits accuse insurance companies of shaving settlements”
● 5/1/15, Newsday.com, “FEMA: Thousands of insurance settlements did not include sales tax”
● 5/24/16, Frontline/PBS at 10:00 pm PDT, special report “Business of Disaster”
● 5/27/16, The Forum, “‘Business of Disaster’ Examines who Profits When Disasters like Superstorm Sandy Strike”
● 8/1/16, New York Times, “Long Island Company Charged in Insurance Scheme After Hurricane Sandy”
● 8/1/16, Fox News, “Indictment: Engineering firm altered Sandy damage reports”