So we see that both MA and AZ have laws stating that merchants are immune from lawsuits if they have some faint shred of reasonableness realting to their actions in detaining you, with “reasonable” force. AMazing what a few political contributions can buy.
I read the story of an NHL hocky player who was charged this summer with impaired boating for refusing to provide the police with a blood and urine sample for drugs, in the middle of a lake, after he had blown sober on the breathalyzer.
American employers can demand urine tests for drugs at will, something almost unheard of in Canadian law.
I guess you really can strike “Land of the free” off the list for the USA.
I don’t really think that’s the case, Merchant’s privilege laws go back to well before most state laws were written. I think it has more to do with the common attitude merchants should be allowed to protect themselves from thieves rather then some complex usurping of rights by the wealthy.
Sorry, giving merchants pretty much immunity from false arrest lawsuits as long as they allege reasonable grounds does not sound like “common attitude”. Unless there’s a history of those rights being severely restricted by precedent, it basically means a merchant has as much immunity as the police. Oddly, this immunity I don’t recall being mentioned in several threads in the past few years on citizen’s arrest - even though it is a glaring exception. It sounds like merchants were over-reacting when they mistook people for shoplifters, having their butts sued off, and appealing to the state for relief from their poor judgement.
If people are on a crowded sidewalk and someone yells thief. The guy trying to run through the crowd is likely going to be stopped by random bystanders. That gentleman may not even be the thief but there are many many instances that guys running from the direction of someone yelling thief are stopped with force by common everyday people. I think it’s pretty commonly accepted that people reasonable suspected of thievery can be stopped with force.
Feel free to challenge my theory with a friend. Go onto crowded city sidewalk have your friend start running and yell ‘thief’. I’m willing to bet the police and courts would not find in the mock thieves favor when he tries to sue those who stopped him. The laws simply codify Merchants, who are particularly vulnerable to theft, get decreased scrutiny when stopping thieves because of there position in our society. We’d rather not make merchants go through a trial every time they reasonably stop a shoplifter. If it is questionable if the stop was reasonable or not then they must go through the same scrutiny as anyone else.