A U.S. District Judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit over the lewd conduct of former HP CEO and chairman Mark Hurd, who resigned in 2010 after a marketing consultant named Jodie Fisher accused him of sexual harassment.

The accusations turned into a full blown scandal when an internal probe found that Hurd submitted inaccurate expense reports in an attempt to conceal his relationship with the contractor. This revelation caught the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which launched an investigation to see if Hurd leaked confidential information about the acquisition of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) for $13.9 billion.

In the suit, a group of HP shareholders led by the New York Cement & Concrete Workers District Council Pension Fund alleged that Hurd fraudulently inflated the company’s share price. They also accused the hardware vendor of breaching its corporate ethics policy, which includes a commitment to being “open, honest, and direct.”

Judge Jon Tigar dismissed the case on the grounds that these statements were “so general that a reasonable investor would not depend on [them] as a guarantee that [HP] would never take a step that might adversely affect its reputation.” He added that “adoption of the plaintiff’s argument (would) render every code of ethics materially misleading whenever an executive commits an ethical violation following a scandal.”

The judge ruled that Hurd and Hewlett Packard’s alleged efforts to cover up his misconduct do not constitute fraud because no “material misstatements or omissions” were made, and that “nothing suggests that Hurd thought that he could mislead investors.”

This week’s ruling represents the final chapter in a controversy that both Hewlett Packard and Hurd, who currently serves as the co-president of Oracle, are undoubtedly glad to put behind them.