Walmart and a foreign subsidiary can be let off the hook from a lawsuit claiming shareholders lost money following the revelation that the rapid growth in Mexico may have been driven by a bribery scheme targeting government officials.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit preserves a ruling handed down last year by U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York, who found that many of plaintiff Michael Fogel’s claims regarding the subsidiary’s conduct in 2005 were barred by the five-year statute of limitation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.