After a night celebrating his daughter's marriage, Glenn Turner put the wedding cake in his car.
He took a step backwards to close the boot, fell and landed in a sunken garden bed in the Harrington Grove Country Club car park, in Sydney's south west.
The father of the bride described the garden as a "hole", the edge of which came to just below the second button on his wedding suit jacket.
Mr Turner, a diesel mechanic, suffered arm and shoulder injuries from the fall on the night of November 19, 2011, and had surgery.
He sued the club and architecture firm Hassell for negligence.
"Who builds a garden bed lower than a car park level anyway?" he said, while sitting in the NSW District Court witness box.
Judge John Hatzistergos last year found the depth of the garden bed was not obvious, the risk of serious injury was high, and ordered the club pay Mr Turner $216,000.
The judge would have awarded more than $250,000, but noted some "contributory negligence" in Mr Turner's action of stepping onto the kerb behind his car.
The judge cleared the architecture firm of any breach of duty of care.
The 58-year-old father was not allowed to access the damages while the club appealed against the decision, in part arguing the architecture firm was in fact liable.
Last week, the NSW Court of Appeal found Hassell architecture firm did have some liability because it designed a sunken garden bed filled with plants.
The firm was ordered to pay a quarter of the damages.
"The plants in the sunken bed behind the car park were intended by Hassell to grow," Justice Mark Leeming wrote in a judgment agreed to by Justice Fabian Gleeson, and Justice Ian Harrison.
"They did in fact grow. By late 2011, they had grown so much that the drop from the rear of the car park was much less visible than had been the case immediately after construction."
However, the court found, the club's liability was "appreciably greater" because it was their responsibility to maintain the gardens.
The club and Hassell were also ordered to pay Mr Turner's legal costs.