Tesla investors lost their bid for a new trial Wednesday after a federal appeals court upheld a jury ruling that CEO Elon Musk wasn’t liable over claims he misled investors by posting about taking his electric vehicle company private in 2018.

The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in San Francisco rejected calls for a new trial from Tesla investors this week, ruling that the plaintiffs didn’t prove that Mr. Musk intentionally misled investors.

Lawyers for the Tesla investors argued that the judge who presided over the previous case in 2023, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, gave flawed instructions to the jury members that required them to establish that Mr. Musk made false statements.

While the three-judge panel agreed that Mr. Musk’s 2018 tweets were irresponsible, jurors still had to determine whether they were intentionally misleading to decide damages in the case.

In his tweets from six years ago, Mr. Musk claimed he had secured funding from investors to take Tesla private at $420 a share. Tesla’s stock price rose dramatically after the tweets but fell back after investors realized he wouldn’t take the company private after all.

Investors were furious and quickly filed suit against Mr. Musk and Tesla, accusing the billionaire of costing them billions of dollars. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the tweets that year, with Mr. Musk and the commission agreeing to a $40 million fraud settlement.