Wife Was Faulted For Being Rear Ended

My wife was reported as at fault by a LEO in an accident report. The kicker is the 16 year old who rear ended her has had 3 accidents this year and his aunt works for the DA’s office and is the one who helps get him out of this type of trouble.

I’ll outline what happened, please note that we live in a small town, total population currently is 1,000, where news seems to be carried by the wind.

She made a right turn out the local Wal Mart and drove a quarter of a mile before having to come to a stop to let the vehicle infront of her make a left turn. 4 full seconds after her car had come to a stop she was rear ended. (We have a forward facing dash cam in the car, I used its record time to count see it was 4 full seconds from stop to hit).

My wife pulled off the road into a parking lot and got out to exchange information when the reporting officer arrived he collected my wife’s license and info then went to the kid who admittedly said he didn’t have a license but did give the LEO the vehicles insurance. LEO asked the kids name and when he was answered he said “oh you’re Carla’s nephew” and proceeded asking the usual questions and by the end of it was claiming my wife was at fault for “cutting off and brake checking the kid.”

We are considering getting a lawyer to fight for damages to our vehicle because we feel she wasn’t at fault. The dash cam shows her pulling out, driving 1/4 mile, coming to a complete stop, 4 seconds pass and the car jerks hard from being hit from behind. I feel like 4 seconds is a long time frame when it comes to auto accidents.

Is it worth getting a lawyer to fight this? It’s gonna cause our insurance to go up plus we have over $3,000 in damages to the car now.