nyclio

I was in an accident last Friday where the driver side rear door and rear quarter panel sustained quite a bit of damage. A driver in a left turn only lane merged into my car which was in a left-straight lane. He has an older (1995?) Nissan Quest minivan and on hisvan, the passenger side headlight area was damaged.

I told him I would go through the insurance (I have a $1000 deductible) to get my car repaired since it is a lease model that will be going back to Infiniti. I took the car to the bodyshop (a good trusted shop) and was given an estimate of $940 to repair the damage ($800-$850 in cash). A full police report was filed.

The police officer didn't write who is at fault; since he wasn't there to witness the accident; all he wrote was what happened:

Vehicle 1 was traveling eastbound and says vehicle 2 side-swiped vehicle 1.

Vehicle 2 was traveling eastbound and says vehicle 1 side-swiped vehicle 2.

Then there are diagrams of where damage occurred.

The police officer was an a$$hole. He came to us, asked us for license, reg. and insurance. I had everything, but in my car had 2 insurance cards; the older one and my current one. In haste, I gave him the wrong insurance card (expired). He didn't ask me any questions; he took the paperwork back to his cruiser and sat in there. He came out about 10 minutes later and handed both of us tickets for having expired insurance. I told the cop that I must've given him the wrong card and I had valid insurance on me (which I showed him). He didn't care and said I need to mail it in now since the ticket had already been written. I then said that it would be have been the right thing to do to at least TELL me that I gave him an expired insurance card and he could've asked me if I had any other but he was just too ticket happy. He spent more time explaining the ticket than he did talking about the actual accident.

My friend who is in the NYPD also looked at the ticket and was able to tell from the cop's badge number that the cop was just a rookie.

I told the guy that he could either pay out of pocket for my repair or I will go through the insurance. However, he is convinced that he was not at fault in this accident and does not want to pony up any cash. Secondly, he said since he feels I was mostly at fault, we can call it no-fault and I can pay to fix his minivan (which isn't even worth fixing from the looks of it) and he will pay for my damages.

I'm not sure where I should go with this or what I should do.

Any and all advice is welcome.

Thanks.