VANCOUVER (CBC) - A woman whose mother and sister were shot to death in a B.C. hospital cannot sue the federal and provincial governments for compensation for psychiatric injuries, a B.C. Supreme Court justice has ruled.

In a judgment released on Friday, Madam Justice Marion J. Allan dismissed Lisa Darlene Thompson's lawsuit because she didn't actually witness the killings, but only heard about them while at home.

Thompson's mother, Anna Adams, 68, and sister Sherry Heron, 41, were slain at the Mission Memorial Hospital, where Heron was recovering from a car accident, on May 20, 2003.

The shooter was Heron's husband, Bryan, 52, a veteran prison guard at the Fraser Correctional Centre, who on the day of the killings had been served with a divorce notice and restraining order to keep away from his wife.

Heron was on the run for three days after the shooting, and shot and killed himself as a police dog was trying to pull him out of a hollowed-out tree stump in woods near Mission.

Thompson has been off work on disability leave since the fatal shootings, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. She and her siblings filed a lawsuit against the federal and B.C. governments and the Fraser Health Authority.

The lawsuit alleged the governments and the health authority had failed to protect the murdered women from the foreseeable risk of injury after Thompson told Mission RCMP and hospital staff a week before the deadly attack that Heron had made threats against his wife.

Thompson also claimed the defendants, who included a hospital staff member and the warden of the prison where Heron had worked, breached the duty of care owed to her, making them liable for her psychiatric condition.

Though an RCMP constable interviewed Sherry Heron following the complaint, he concluded her case needed no further investigation and no charges were filed. The constable, Mike Pfeifer, was also named in Thompson's lawsuit.

The defendants argued that since Thompson didn't see the shooting or its aftermath, she lacked "locational proximity" and couldn't recover negligence for psychiatric injuries.

Crucial distinction

Judge Allan ruled that though past cases had established precedent for damages after seeing a loved one tragically killed, there's a distinction between witnessing an event and being told of it after the fact.

"Despite the unique facts here - the plaintiff's attempts to prevent the tragedy and her subsequent fears for her own and her family's safety during the three days that Bryan Heron was at large - Ms. Thompson cannot establish the degree of locational proximity required by [the previous] cases," the judgment reads.

Lisa Thompson's lawyer, Cameron Ward, questioned the distinction.

"That seems rather artificial, rather arbitrary, and indeed one can question whether or not that creates a just result," said Ward, who had argued Thompson's case was different because she had informed police and hospital staff of Heron's threats.

In the court documents, Ward said Thompson lived "in terror" for three days before Heron's body was found. She and her family received police protection following the shooting and were put in a hotel by police.

A claim by Thompson and her siblings for damages because of negligence is proceeding.

With files from the Canadian Press

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