James Haight, 71, a lawyer who most recently had specialized in legal issues affecting the elderly, died June 9 at a vacation home in Bethany Beach, Del. He was a North Bethesda resident.
He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said his wife, Sandra Hoffman-Haight.
Mr. Haight began his legal career in 1968 as a lawyer in Arlington with Millen, Raptes and White. From 1976 to 1987, he practiced in Gaithersburg with Haight and Associates.
Later he was an administrative law judge with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent lawyer with the Department of Energy and, from 1989 to 2006, senior patent lawyer with the Office of Technology Transfer at the National Institutes of Health.
From 2001 until his death, he also had a private practice in estate planning and elder law in Gaithersburg.
James Clifford Haight was a Cleveland native and a 1962 graduate of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., where he played saxophone and clarinet in the marching band. He graduated from the University of Maryland law school in 1968.
He had served on the parish council of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, where he also was a financial adviser.
His first wife, Patricia Dial Haight, died in 1989 after 25 years of marriage.
Survivors include his wife of 13 years, Sandra Stone Hoffman-Haight of North Bethesda; a daughter from his first marriage, Emily Haight of Montgomery Village; three stepchildren, Alexander Hoffman of Guilford, Conn., Jeremy Hoffman of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Susanna Hoffman of St. Michaels, Md.; and a grandson.
— Bart Barnes
