Ghosn Ghosn, 30, and Bob Chahine, 32, were standing on the back of Jawad Al Hussein's ute as he drove into raging floodwaters on the night of October 31, 2022.
The 43-year-old was found not guilty of manslaughter and dangerous driving occasioning death by a jury on Wednesday afternoon after a trial in Goulburn District Court that ran for just over a week.
He is still facing lesser charges of negligent driving occasioning death which were not put before the jury during the trial and will return to court on Monday.
Neither of the drowned men could swim and they either fell or jumped from the vehicle as it was swept downstream by the fast-moving waters, the jury heard during the trial.
Their bodies were found several days later having been carried up to two kilometres from the causeway.
Al Hussein and another man who were in the cab of the ute were able to escape and swim to safety before watching their terrified friends disappear into the darkness.
Defence barrister James Lang argued Al Hussein's actions were an error of judgment and did not meet the threshold for manslaughter.
"Everyone in their life makes errors of judgment," he said.
"This error of judgment in a very short space of time resulted in the very unfortunate loss of life of two men."
The jury was played panicked triple-zero calls from Al Hussein after he walked nearly an hour to find phone reception pleading for help and telling the operator he had lost sight of his friends.
"Please help, please help. There's two people dying," he says in the call.
"They went. They're gone. We lost them.
"I wish we could see them."
The group had been attempting to reach a hobby farm owned by Al Hussein just minutes away.
He had told the drowned men their own vehicle wouldn't make it across the flooded causeway and they should ride on the back of his Mitsubishi Triton ute.
According to prosecutors, the vehicle stalled almost as soon as it entered the "very fast-flowing and relatively deep water" and was quickly swept off the causeway.
"He drove into those floodwaters knowing or believing that there was a significant risk that his vehicle would stall (and) that both passengers could not swim," crown prosecutor Glen Porter said.
Mr Chahine's wife Ramonda gave tearful evidence during the trial, recounting a phone call with her husband just moments before the men entered the water.
"He said, 'I have to go, it's raining'," she told the court.
"The next morning I sent him a message saying 'good morning' and it didn't go through."
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