'Lemon' Bill Gains Broad State Support

If radio personality Dave Maynard gets what he's been lobbying for, Massachusetts car buyers will have significantly more protection in making their purchases.

The well-known host of WBZ's morning show has been urging his listeners nearly every morning for the last year to get their state legislators to support a "lemon law" that would prevent consumers who had been sold a defective vehicle from having to bear the repair costs, and would force a manufacturer to replace a car that could not be repaired.

Connecticut enacted a similar law last April, and the idea has gained momentum in the Bay State. Last year there were no lemon laws before the state legislature, and now there are 13 different proposals.

"If they have it in Connecticut, why don't they protect the new car buyer here?" Maynard said in an interview Saturday. He added that he had received 500 letters from listeners with horror stories about cars they had bought.

Support for a lemon law cuts across party and factional lines according to legislative sources. "This is not a partisan issue," Walter Rorn, senior research analyst for the Joint Commerce and Labor Committee, said Friday.

Even the Massachusetts State Auto Dealers Association supports the concept of the law "We didn't build the car, so why should we get stuck with it?" Jim W. Holmes, executive vice-president of the association, said this week.

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Auto manufacturers have not been enthusiastic about lemon laws, which are now under consideration in 35 state legislatures. "We already have adequate safeguards for the consumer," said a Ford Motor Company spokesman in New York, adding that Ford planned to establish a customer appeals board in Massachusetts this July.

State House observes said this week that the legislature is likely to pass a lemon law soon Rorn said the bill would be "very tough to vote against," and that the Joint Commerce and Labor Committee, which must shape the various proposals into one bill, was required by law to act on all of its business by April 27.