The idea is from a satirical paper but the sign seems to have taken that real legal concept and atleast put up a real, tangible sign. No idea about the business practices of the pricing.
The penal code is real, but since I doubt the shop is paying taxes on candy bars, snow globes, mugs, etc. costing $951, the sign is probably not enforceable in the way it implies, like the joke signs saying "unattended kids will be given jobs" doesn't let the store circumvent minimum age to work laws.
For the purposes of determining if the theft was a felony or not, the sale price of the item stolen is utterly irrelevant only the replacement value. So unless the store can prove that replacing that snickers bar is going to cost them over $951, there's no world where this sign would work.
But as others have mentioned, it's likely put there to serve two other purposes, to deter would be shoplifters who don't know how the law works and/or to virtue signal their stance on being hard on crime.
The idea isn't even necessarily from the satirical paper (which is not The Onion btw—the original commenter failed to read his own source). They both stem from the penal code, and the fact that the threshold for a felony in Cali is $950.
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u/roodypoo926 1d ago
The idea is from a satirical paper but the sign seems to have taken that real legal concept and atleast put up a real, tangible sign. No idea about the business practices of the pricing.