The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear an appeal from a Vancouver businesswoman who has been locked in a battle over the $2-billion construction of the Canada Line for the past six years.
The court did not provide reasons for not wanting to hear the B.C. case, as is its practice.
Susan Heyes, whose Cambie Street maternity shop was nearly bankrupted by the rapid transit line construction, was hoping that Canada's highest court would overturn a 2009 B.C. Appeal Court ruling that stripped her of a $600,000 judgment against the consortium behind the Canada Line.
Heyes successfully sued for lost revenues after several years of construction deeply disrupted her normally pedestrian-friendly shopping neighbourhood. Her shop, Hazel & Co., lost upwards of $500,000 because of the cut-and-cover construction, she said.
But the public-private partnership between the Canada Line appealed the decision and the shop owner was ordered to repay the cash. The lower court ruled that the developers had statutory authority for the project and the disruptions were inevitable.
Heyes wasn't alone in her fight against the Canada Line construction. Roughly 40 other Cambie Street merchants filed a lawsuit last year looking for millions in compensation after losing customers who couldn't brave the construction zone to get into their stores.
