A man walks past the front doors of Mission Memorial Hospital in Mission, B.C., in 2003.RICHARD LAM/The Canadian Press
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favour of three British Columbia medical workers who argued they developed breast cancer as a result of their jobs.
The cases involve Katrina Hammer, Patricia Schmidt and Anne MacFarlane, who worked in a lab at Mission Memorial Hospital.
The Workers' Compensation Board originally denied their applications for compensation benefits on the grounds their cancers were not occupational diseases.
But rulings by the Workers Compensation Administrative Tribunal in 2010 and 2011 overturned those decisions and linked the cancers to the workplace.
The British Columbia Court of Appeal, however, said the tribunal's decisions were unreasonable because there was no evidence that the women's cancer was caused by their work environment and the tribunal ignored expert advice to the contrary.
The Supreme Court ruled for the women, saying the evidence before the tribunal was capable of supporting a link between their cancers and the workplace.