Last month, Corey delaHoussaye agreed to a $325,000 settlement after suing the Livingston Parish Council, the parish president and others in state and federal court over nonpayment for his work as a contractor investigating problems with the Hurricane Gustav cleanup.
The settlement is drawing to a close a six-year battle that saw delaHoussaye become a federal informant and political target—as well as the subject of a persistent criminal prosecution and what a judge has declared an illegal state criminal investigation.
As Business Report details in feature from the current issue, all of it has come at great cost to delaHoussaye and C-Del, the consulting firm he launched in 1997.
Mounting legal bills forced him to sell the home he built on Canyon Road. C-Del, which once earned more than $1 million in revenues annually, is now defunct. And the media glare makes it impossible for him to secure contracts of any sort—one need only Google “Corey delaHoussaye” to see why.
Lately, this father of a 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son has been meeting with a bankruptcy attorney.
“I’ve been rejected on every RFP I’ve submitted, and people tell me it’s because of the bad press,” he says. “Corey delaHoussaye is the C-Del brand. You kill the face of the company and you kill the company.”
While other parishes long ago cleaned up and moved on from Hurricane Gustav, the storm and its aftermath have continued to pervade Livingston Parish politics and headlines. At the eye of the storm has been delaHoussaye, who hasn’t always come across as the most sympathetic of whistleblowers.
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