Kittery dealer blue over Maine law banning Sunday motor vehicle sales

KITTERY – A motorcycle dealer has lost his challenge of the state law barring the sale of motor vehicles on Sundays.

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld the rejection of a lawsuit by Kittery Motorcycle Inc., which claims it is losing business to dealers in New Hampshire because of Maine’s ban on selling cycles on Sundays.

Both New Hampshire and Massachusetts allow the sale of motor vehicles on Sundays, but Maine has declined to follow suit.

Mark Dellapasqua, owner of Kittery Motorcycle, said it’s not fair that snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles are sold seven days a week while motorcycles are lumped together with cars and trucks, which cannot be sold on Sundays.

Dellapasqua sued in federal court, contending his constitutional rights were violated because he was forbidden from selling motorcycles on Sundays while people can buy groceries, liquor, boats and guns seven days a week.

His lawyer, Barry Bachrach of Worcester, Mass., said motorists can barely drive through Kittery on Sundays because of all the traffic at the outlet stores. “But you can’t sell a motorcycle,” he said.

Dellapasqua’s lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby, who sympathized with the plaintiff in noting that “the legislative scheme here is not pretty” before ultimately dismissing the lawsuit.

Hornby wrote that the state Sunday sales law is a “patchwork quilt of accommodations sewn together over the years” with enough exceptions that Mainers can buy just about anything except for a car, truck or motorcycle.

“Probably it would have been fairer to treat motorcycles like boats, jet skis or snowmobiles, but the decision to lump motorcycles together with cars and trucks is not wholly indefensible,” Hornby wrote.

The 1st Circuit agreed with Hornby. That means the only legal recourse for Dellapasqua is an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dellapasqua hasn’t ruled that out. “They haven’t seen the last of me,” he declared on Friday.

Dellapasqua, whose dealership sells Indian and Big Dog motorcycles, also tried and failed to get the Legislature to change the law last year. Rep. Mary Andrews, R-York, is sponsoring a similar bill on his behalf this year.

The Maine Automobile Dealers Association has consistently opposed an exemption allowing cars and trucks to be sold on Sundays.

People like to be able to look at cars without being pestered by the sales staff, and the dealerships like to close one day a week for the benefit of the employees, said Tom Andrews, the association’s president.