John Houghtaling

John Houghtaling is managing partner and majority owner of Gauthier, Houghtaling LLP, a law firm with a 42 year old legacy that paved the way to the $358 billion U.S. tobacco settlement in 1998, and won settlements and verdicts in an additional $4 billion.

Houghtaling began his career in 1996 moving boxes of files for $8 an hour in the Gauthier Firm. At the time, Wendell Gauthier was leading a coalition of 100 law firms against the U.S. tobacco industry, an epic battle that would lead to the $358 billion U.S. tobacco settlement in 1998. Gauthier and his partner took Houghtaling out of the file room and promoted him to a law clerk in 1997, and as an attorney in 1998. By 2013, Houghtaling would be featured on the front cover of CityBusiness 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 of the firm.

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.

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