City’s Seers Won’t Put Pox On City Afterall

Rejoice, people! The city has caved in to the doom and gloom prediction from fortune tellers and, once again, psychics can tell the fortunes of gullible people.

L&I shut down the psychics last week due a decades-old law banning fortune telling for profit. But the City Solicitor’s Office advised L&I to back off on Wednesday. It wasn’t a soothsayer telling John Street to beware the Ides of May, though. No, it was Manayunk fortune teller Monica Mitchell, who unleased something far more powerful than fortune tellers: lawyers.

The city backed off after Mitchell’s attorney, John Raimondi, filed a request last week for a restraining order and preliminary injunction on the ground that the statute could be invoked only in cases of fraud. [...]

Andrew Ross, divisional deputy city solicitor, said yesterday that while the law was useful in fraud cases, “we felt it was hard to say what kind of evidence might be needed to prove someone was pretending to tell fortunes.”

“I now present Exhibit A: This crystal ball.”

City psychics thrown a lifeline [Inquirer]
Monday: Fortune Teller Crackdown Spells Doom For Us All