Texas Lemon Law Blog

This is the second of a two part series on the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act – a piece of legislation that is central to many automobile lemon law claims. Last time, we looked at the life of William Grant Magnusson. This time, we will examine the other legislator whose name this legislation bears.

Frank Edward Moss (September 23, 1911 – January 29, 2003) was born in Utah – the state he would later represent in the Senate. Like William Magnusson, Moss was also a lawyer by training, graduating from the George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C., in 1937. Following graduation, he served on the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1937, he returned to Utah where he served as a municipal court judge and then as a county attorney. Following an unsuccessful bid for the governorship of Utah in 1956, he was elected to the US Senate in 1958.

In the Senate, Moss took a particular interest in health care, environmental, and consumer issues. In 1967, he wrote a book entitled “The Water Crisis” dealing with issues of water use and pollution, especially in the Western portion of the United States. Moss was instrumental in legislation concerning fair packaging and labeling and truth in lending. He was active in health related legislating, being one of the original sponsors of Medicare and authoring the ban on TV cigarette advertising.

If you spend much time reading “lemon law” sites or talking to a “lemon law” lawyer, you are bound to hear the term “Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act“. This piece of legislation (sometimes abbreviated as Mag-Moss) is an important piece of federal law dealing with consumer warranties. It was enacted in 1975 in response to deceptive practices on the part of manufacturers and distributors. This is the keystone of many lemon law suits. While the mention of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is common, there is rarely any discussion about the two legislators for whom the act is named.

William Grant Magnusson (April 12, 1905 – May 20, 1989) spent 45 years of his life as representative of the people of Washington state. He was a lawyer by training and graduated from the University of Washington Law school in 1929. After graduation, he practiced law in Seattle, including a position as a special prosecuting attorney in King County in 1931. His interest in politics started early and he was a founding member of the Young Democrats of Washington. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1936 and was reelected three times. Magnusson served with Lyndon B. Johnson on the House Naval Affairs Committee. They remained friends. When Magnusson was married in 1964, LBJ was his best man.

In 1944, Magnusson was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. He continued to serve continuously in the Senate until he was defeated in 1980. During his tenure in the senate, Magnusson fought strongly for funding for the state of Washington. Vice President Walter Mondale said of him: “He is scrupulously fair with federal funds; one half for Washington state, one half for the rest of the country.”

Lemons are healthy fruits, rich in vitamin C and other nutrients, used in a myriad of wonderful products, from lemonade and lemon meringue pie to cleaning agents. So, why do we call bad cars lemons?

The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that there are several possible origins for ‘lemon’ being used to refer to an inferior product. One possibility is that it came from early 20th century American slang, where a ‘lemon’ referred to “a person who is a loser, a simpleton,” as a lemon. Another possibility is that the term originated from British pool hall slang, where a ‘lemon game’ was a game played by a hustler. It seems most likely that that the use of a ‘lemon’ as a bad car came from another British slang term from the early 1900’s in which “to hand someone a lemon” was “to pass off a sub-standard article as a good one.” (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Regardless of the where they came from, the terms ‘lemon’ and ‘lemon laws‘ are now common in our modern vocabulary, and codified in our laws. In the context of and vehicles, most everyone agrees that buying a lemon new car, does leave one with a sour feeling.