State consumer-protection laws protect companies, too, at least when it comes to their vehicles, court rules

The Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that a state law and regulation intended to protect consumers from shoddy vehicle repairs applies to corporations as well.

The court's opinion comes in response to a formal query from a federal appeals court, which is currently considering a lawsuit brought by Limoliner - which provides upper-class bus service between Boston and New York - against a maintenance company it says failed to properly fix a problem on one of its buses. A lower-court judge had thrown out Limoliner's claim under the Massachusetts consumer-protection law and a companion regulation developed by the state Attorney General's office because Limoliner is a corporation, not a person.

But in its opinion, the state's highest court said the specific provisions cited by Limoliner refer to "customers," rather than "consumers," and the fact that the Attorney General's office used that specific language was obviously deliberate:

The word "customer" is defined in the first section of the Attorney General's motor vehicle regulations as "any person who . . . seeks to have repairs . . . performed by a repair shop on a motor vehicle," 940 Code Mass. Regs. § 5.01 (1993), and, in that same section, "person" is defined as "an association, a corporation, an institution, a natural person, an organization, a partnership, a trust or any legal entity."

In a footnote, the court also rejects another argument by the company Limoliner is suing that involves pronouns:

[W]e are not persuaded by the defendant's contention that the regulation's use of an authorization form written in the first person, or its reference to customers as "him or her," implies intent to restrict its applicability only to "individual consumers/customers." See 940 Code Mass. Regs. § 5.05(3)-(4). The language of the regulation may have been written with consumers in mind, but that does not mean it was intended only for consumers. Moreover, with respect to the form, both its first person language and its use of colloquial terms, such as "car," might simply reflect an attempt to provide an easily-intelligible document -- one that would be just as helpful to businesses, who might not be versed in legal or automotive jargon, as to consumers.