Lerner Enterprises and The Tower Cos., the owners of the White Flint Mall, are still being forced to pay Lord & Taylor $31M in damages after appealing a District Court ruling.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the lower court's decision in an opinion released Tuesday, Bethesda Magazine reports.

The Lord & Taylor is all that remains of White Flint Mall after the developers demolished the property in 2015 with plans to start an $800M, 5.2M SF mixed-use development. The retailer sued the owners for breaching a 1975 contract stating the owner would maintain the mall as a "first-class" facility until 2042. That suit was successful, and in August 2015 Lord & Taylor was awarded $31M in damages.

In the appeal, attorneys for the mall's owners argued Lord & Taylor would earn greater profits from the future development, but the judges found the future development too clouded in risk and uncertainty to guarantee such profits.

The future of the project is now uncertain, as one of the attorneys for the mall owners said last year the development would not proceed unless the appeal is successful. The only other legal option seems to be another appeal, to the Supreme Court, but there has been no indication of how Lerner and Tower plan to move forward.