All he had to do was show his receipt. No words necessary, and everyone would have been saved lots of bother. Do you believe shoplifters should be allowed to say “no thanks” and shoplift with impunity?
All Rosa Parks had to do was move to the back of the bus. No words necessary, and everyone would have been saved lots of bother.
Under the Ohio statutes, the store can only do so much.
Whether any of these actions/reactions hold any sway depends on how they are defined legally. For instance, does the item you just bought become your private property once payment is completed?
Here it is again, in case you missed post #160:
(A) A merchant, or an employee or agent of a merchant, who has probable cause to believe that items offered for sale by a mercantile establishment have been unlawfully taken by a person, may, for the purposes set forth in division (C) of this section, detain the person in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time within the mercantile establishment or its immediate vicinity.
And...
(E) The officer, agent, or employee of the library, museum, or archival institution, the merchant or employee or agent of a merchant, or the owner, lessee, employee, or agent of the facility acting under division (A) , (B), or (D) of this section shall not search the person detained, search or seize any property belonging to the person detained without the persons consent, or use undue restraint upon the person detained.
That's the present law. So what's left to determine here is whether the guy was in the right by refusing to show his receipt, or whether a business can create its own set of rules contrary to state law. (Or maybe the business has been granted an exemption somewhere. Who knows.)
But if a store is going to say that they have the right to search everyone's bags or examine everyone's receipts on the way out, that means that they have by default placed everyone who enters the premises under suspicion. Is that legal?
And maybe it seems like such a small thing, but I think it shows you how ignorant people are of what the laws are - or maybe that there are so damn many of them that it's become almost impossible for the average person to keep track.