(Amended by Ord. No. 158,175, Eff. 9/5/83.)
No person shall advertise by sign, circular, handbill or in any newspaper, periodical, or magazine, or other publication or publications, or by any other means, to tell fortunes, to find or restore lost or stolen property, to locate oil wells, gold or silver or other ore or metal or natural product; to restore lost love or friendship, to unite or procure lovers, husbands, wives, lost relatives or friends, for or without pay, by means of occult or psychic powers, faculities, forces, crafts or sciences, including clairvoyance, spirits, mediumship, seership, prophecy, astrology, palmistry, necromancy, cards, talismans, charms, potions, magnetism or magnetized articles or substances, oriental mysteries, magic of any kind or nature, or numerology.
No person shall engage in or carry on any business the advertisement of which is prohibited by this section.
Where the appellant maintained a sign in her window: “Spiritual Science Readings”; offered to tell a witness “everything he wanted to know,” for $2.00; told the witness the witnesses’s wife would return within three days, the witness was going to receive letters with money in them, and the witness would take a trip, and would go back to sea, such facts constituted a violation of Section 43.30 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, and a conviction was affirmed, even though the appellant defended on the ground that she was a duly ordained minister and that the $2.00 was a donation to the American Church.
People v. Merino, CR A 1921.
Even though the appellant received a salary from the church in return for her collections, she was not exempt under the provisions of Section 43.31.
People v. Merino, Supra.
Where the appellant told the witness that she would be married twice, would marry an attorney, would go to a new job, that the unhappy part of her life would end July 15, that she was in danger of having an accident, but would live to be 70 or 80 years old and appellant charged the witness $1.00, the conviction was sustained even though appellant was an ordained minister of a bona fide church.
People v. Norvell, CR A 1956.
See also: People v. Whittemore, CR A 2031.
“It is not a violation of Section 43.30 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code to tell fortunes unless the person so doing is engaged in or is carrying on any business of fortune telling, or one or more of the other activities therein prohibited...a single act does not constitute a business.” (In this case the court affirmed a conviction of 43.30 and vagrancy, holding that “a reading of the reporter’s transcript convinces us that the proof of defendant’s guilt was overwhelming”; (Bishop dissenting).
People v. Abdullah et Ahmed Saud, CR A 2008.
“Fortune telling...is the practice of foretelling events, or prophesying the future, also the practice or art of professing to reveal future events in the life of another...Tested by this definition many of the acts proved to have been done by defendant, such as narrating the past history of his visitors and characterizing the personalities of the visitors and advising them as to their present and future conduct, do not constitute fortune telling. But other acts shown, such as stating that one visitor would receive a letter from her brother...do come within the above definition...But Section 43.30 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code does not contain a general prohibition of fortune telling...In addition to the words quoted after the phrase ‘by means of,’ there is an enumeration of other arts and practices...But we are satisfied that one who advertised merely to tell fortunes, without specifying any of the enumerated means of doing so, and likewise one who does tell fortunes without professing or exemplifying any of those means, does not violate this ordinance.”
People v. Miracles A. Smith, CR A 2034.
A minister who tells fortunes as a business otherwise than in the performance of their pastoral duties acts in violation of Section 43.30.
People v. Bradford, CR A 2076.
Section 43.30 is constitutional, and does not offend Sections 11 and 21 of Article I of the State Constitution, and even though it were conceded that astrology is a science such a fact of itself would not warrant a person in conducting a business of telling fortunes.
People v. Griffen, CR A 2190.