Yes, sometimes scene files get corrupted. This could happen by Vue crashing down or power outage, for example. That's why it's always wise to save incrementally (save not over the same file over and over again, but save in sequentially numbered files).

Unfortunetaly, I don't know of any method to recover a corrupt scene file... Hopefully someone else reading this will.

See also this thread about a similar incident:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3349622