Helen Jones was visiting Wangaratta from northern NSW when she stumbled after getting off a motorbike on which she was a pillion passenger.

She compared the driveway to an Iraqi war zone.

The fall happened at the home of Sharyn Leanne White at 17 Burke Street on the morning of February 27, 2005, and resulted in Mrs Jones breaking her left wrist and spraining her right ankle.

Yesterday in the Supreme Court, Judge David Harper found Ms White had been negligent in her maintenance of the driveway.

Ms White and her partner Barry Hartnell, who now live at Eldorado, were not in court for yesterday’s finding.

“Put up a high fence and don’t let anyone on your property, because friends will turn into vexatious litigants,” Mr Hartnell told The Border Mail last night.

“Getting that sort of money for a broken wrist is ridiculous — it’s just a joke.”

Judge Harper said that Mrs Jones suffered ongoing lifestyle difficulties due to the fall.

They included not being able to vacuum, a situation which saw carpets replaced with floorboards at her Ballina home, and an inability to play her pinball machine.

“This is something from which she formerly derived much pleasure,” Judge Harper said.

He awarded her a total of $177,208.65 which involved general damages of $95,000 and $82,208.65 to cover loss of income, replacement labour and flooring, travel and medical bills.

Mr Hartnell said the decision had stunned his partner of 10 years, who declined to comment.

“She’s just in disbelief, she couldn’t believe it,” he said before saying the insurance company would pay the costs.

Mr Hartnell considered the Burke Street driveway, which has since been concreted by a new owner, unexceptional.

“It was a typical dirt driveway,” he said.

But Mrs Jones told the court “the driveway might as well have been in an Iraqi war zone”.

Ms White told the court Mrs Jones’s likening of the driveway “to a bombed-out track in Iraq was wildly exaggerated”.

Judge Harper said he relied on the evidence of independent witness Lawrence Harrigan, a nurse who lived next door and told of there being “more than two or three” but “probably less than 15” potholes.