Magisterial District Judge Jim Haggerty, a prominent attorney and former Kingston mayor, died Wednesday. The study team he chaired helped restructure Luzerne County administration. His death occurred four months after he revealed he had severe cancer.
His age was 58. Haggerty was hospitalised to Buffalo’s Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Centre in November. Kingston and Edwardsville voters reelected him to a second six-year term as district judge the next day. Hospice care in Buffalo, his sister’s home, killed him.
Keating said Kingston’s flags have been lowered at half-staff and black bunting will be strung at the Kingston Fire Department and Municipal Building to show sadness. Haggerty was 32 and Keating 26 when he became mayor in 1998. Both worked on efforts to enhance the town, including renovating the Hoyt Library, rebuilding the Kingston community pool and building a centralised firehouse.
Haggerty updated his Facebook page on his cancer struggle and treatment. On January 28, his last post featured a photo of friends who travelled 300 kilometres to see him in the hospital.
After graduating from Wyoming Valley West High School in 1983, Haggerty received an Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship to attend MIT. He earned a management science degree there in 1987. After that, Haggerty studied law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Haggerty joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard while in law school. Haggerty returned to Kingston after four years in a Boston legal firm. After working as in-house counsel at Jewelcor Companies of Wilkes-Barre, he started his own practice in 1995.
Kingston residents elected Haggerty mayor in 1997 after he pledged to fix the city’s finances. After twenty years as mayor and four reelections, he ran for district judge in 2017 and won a six-year term. Haggerty won the Democratic and Republican primaries in May when he ran for reelection last year. This allowed him to comfortably win the November general election without opposition.
Haggerty was voted to a government study committee by Luzerne County voters. He chaired the board from June 2009 until November 2010. The commission’s home rule charter recommended a county council with a professional manager.
Voters approved the charter on November 2, 2010, and it took effect in 2012. Home rule remains throughout the county. County Controller Walter Griffith, who was on the study group, praised Haggerty for leading the commission’s diverse ideas to agreement.
