Reply #265: Well, you'd be 100% wrong then, Justice Bork.

[mhatrw]

The store owner has a right to determine if you are making your purchase legally. Once you have made your purchase, the store owner cannot detain you without probable cause, at least in California:

California penal code says:

490.5 (f) (1) A merchant may detain a person for a reasonable time for the purpose of conducting an investigation in a reasonable manner whenever the merchant has probable cause to believe the person to be detained is attempting to unlawfully take or has unlawfully taken merchandise from the merchant's premises.

No probable cause = no right to detain

http://groups.google.com.au/group/misc.legal.moderated/msg/aac30854a1b2745d?hl=en&

The normal principles of contract law require an agreement, and there's no good reason to believe that the shopper has necessarily agreed to the contents of this or that sign, just because he happened to have passed it on the way in. (If you've ever been in a CompUSA, you know it's positively lousy with signs proclaiming this or that wonderful deal. One could easily be forgiven for missing one, however "prominent.")

Signs like this have been pretty consistently declared null and void by courts for decades, though there are a few exceptions. Examples include those "We are not responsible for coats" signs, "We aren't responsible for what happens to your car" in parking lots, etc. Even software shrink-wrap licenses are generally invalid. (That doesn't mean that the software isn't still protected by basic copyright law, though.)

In any case, even if the sign has the full force of law, it doesn't make it into a crime to refuse the search. At the very worst, it makes the refusal a breach of contract, and a breach without any actual damages whatsoever, at that. So as a practical matter, I'd say, no, the sign doesn't affect things at all, really.