A bad day at Circuit City

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

Did a lot of googling and I cannot make heads or tails of differences between various states.

Personally, I would hope that it would be legal for a private business to be able to verify purchases and if someone doesn't like it, they shouldn't shop there.

Nope - they cannot. If they didn't see you take it, they can't do anything about it. This is in response to court cases in which case the store was wrong and used abusinve practices as seen in this circuit city blog to harrass innocent people. It falls under our illegal search and cesure portion of our Constitution. No one has the right to search you without just cause, and in the case of a store, this just cause would be physically seeing you try to leave with product that they watched you take.

-S