B.C. says Pickton victims’ families can’t target prosecutors in lawsuit

VANCOUVER – The B.C. government says a lawsuit launched by family members of Robert Pickton’s victims can’t target prosecutors because they didn’t pursue attempted murder charges against the serial killer back in 1997.

The families of four women whose remains or DNA were found on Pickton’s farm filed separate lawsuits in May, targeting the provincial and federal governments and Pickton himself.

More than a dozen women disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the years after prosecutors stayed charges against Pickton when a sex worker claimed he almost killer her at his farm.

The province has filed four applications in B.C. Supreme Court asking that any references to Crown counsel and B.C.’s criminal justice branch be removed from the statements of claim.

The notices of application say Crown lawyers are immune from most claims of negligence, pointing to several cases in which courts have thrown out lawsuits filed by people who claimed they were wrongly prosecuted.

The province also argues the Crown had no responsibility to warn sex workers that a potential serial killer may have been targeting sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.