Five policemen involved in an operation which ended with an unarmed man being shot dead have been told they are bound to fail in their claim for damages.

Edward Faulks QC, for Sussex Police, defended a High Court judge's December 2004 ruling which barred part of the officers' compensation claims from going to a full court hearing. He said Mr Justice Wilkie had rightly concluded that the five's claims that corporate failures caused them years of suffering had "no reasonable prospect of success".

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, Lord Justice Tuckey and Lord Justice Laws are being asked to resurrect the five officers' claims that the corporate failures exposed them to long-term stress in the aftermath of James Ashley's fatal shooting in January 1998.

Mr Ashley, 39, was shot dead during an armed raid at his Hastings home as officers sought to seize another man, wanted for a stabbing, who they suspected was there.

Mr Ashley had also been targeted by police for suspected drug-dealing, but was naked in bed with his girlfriend when officers entered.

Supt Chris Burton, Insp Kevin French, Insp Christopher Siggs, PC Stephen Crocker and PC Robert Shoesmith who were all suspended after the incident, but cleared after the prosecution, offered no evidence.

All five have already won the right to sue for the Sussex force's alleged failures to "properly manage" their return to work after criminal and disciplinary proceedings.

But they are now also arguing at the Appeal Court that they should be able to seek compensation for the alleged "corporate failures" that they say led to Mr Ashley's shooting. Mr Ashley's death has spawned a welter of complex and long-running litigation, including damages claims by his family.

The five officers' corporate-failure claims focus on allegations that the anxiety of the criminal and disciplinary proceedings would have been averted but for systemic errors which resulted in the "catastrophe" of the shooting.

Their QC, Robert Glancy, argued they had insufficient training for the operation.

But Mr Faulks said there was no claim that any alleged corporate failures in themselves "caused any stress or psychiatric injury to the appellants".

The stress and psychiatric injuries all concerned the raid's aftermath, he said, or "the criminal and disciplinary proceedings which followed".

Lord Phillips - the nation's senior judge - reserved his ruling to a later, unspecified, date.