Whitlow, Ray R

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Hunter attended Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi on an athletic scholarship, graduating in 1976. While at Millsaps, Hunter received the Scholar-Leader-Athlete Award from the Mississippi Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame. Following college, Hunter attended Mississippi College School of Law in Jackson, Mississippi where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Mississippi College Law Review.

After graduation from law school, Hunter served almost two years as a law clerk to Walter L. Nixon, Jr., U.S. District Judge in Biloxi, Mississippi, returning to Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1981 to practice law. In 1986, Hunter began the law firm. Hunter has been a guest lecturer in seminars for numerous colleges, law schools and bar associations on the subject of the First Amendment, Personal Injury and Environmental Justice. In 1993, Hunter was inducted into the Millsaps College Sports Hall of Fame in 1993 and in May of 1994, was recognized by the Mississippi College School of Law Alumni Association as the Lawyer of the Year. In 1998, Hunter received the Millsaps College Distinguished Athletic Alumni Award. Hunter is the coauthor of the Chapter Jury Selection in the Mississippi Code of Civil Procedure.

Hunter is a member of the Louisiana and Mississippi State Bars, the Mississippi Association for Justice and the Louisiana Association for Justice where he has served on the Board of Directors since 1996 and the Council of Directors since 1998. Hunter is also a member of the Louisiana Bar Foundation and the American Association of Justice where he has been a member of the Leaders Forum since 2001. Hunter has been on the Plaintiff's Steering Committee of many class action lawsuits including one that was settled in 1998 in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, resulting in the relocation of an entire community that had been contaminated with ethylene dichloride. From 1999 to 2002, Hunter served as lead counsel for a over 5,000 people in Columbus, MS, for 3,000 in Bossier, LA and 1,000 in Avoca, Pennsylvania, whose health and homes were impacted from toxic chemicals emanating from nearby wood preserving plants. These cases were resolved amicably. Hunter has tried many environmental mass tort and class action cases to verdict and he has also tried many commercial and product liability cases to verdict. In 2008, Hunter tried an oil reservoir damage case that resulted in a multi million dollar verdict for the plaintiff.

In 1991, Hunter served as lead counsel to Marvin Gorman in the highly publicized defamation trial of Marvin Gorman v. Jimmy Swaggart, which resulted in a $10 million verdict for Reverend Marvin Gorman after a ten-week trial. Hunter authored a nonfiction book as a result of his experiences in the trial drama of Gorman v. Swaggart entitled Let Us Prey, which was released by Genesis Press in March 1999.

Since 1991, Hunter has had an AV Rating with Martindale Hubbell, and since 2007 has been selected by peers to be listed in "Best Lawyers in America" in the field of personal injury litigation. He was also named in Louisiana Super Lawyers 2010.

In 1996, Hunter, a novice to politics, entered the Seventh Congressional District race in a field of eight candidates and made the runoff by the second closest vote in United States History, ultimately losing in the runoff to Chris John by a narrow margin of fifty-two to forty-eight percent of the vote.

Hunter was a member of the Board of Trustees of Mississippi College from 2002-2010; the Foundation Board of Christus St. Patrick Hospital; the Executive Board of Boy Scouts for Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana; the Board of Directors of Johnny Minick Ministries, Inc. of Smyrna, Tennessee; and the National Wildlife Federation's President Council. Hunter and his wife have six children, three grandchildren and worship at The Vineyard in Lake Charles, Louisiana.