Garbage truck backed up, did not see my son on bike following.

What is the name of your state?I live in NJ. My son was on his bike following the garbage truck. When the garbage truck stopped and then began to back up, my son tried to turn his bike around and fell because his tire jammed into the bike frame. The garbage truck backed over my sons bike. The bike is destroyed and my son had a scraped elbow and knee. This happened in a small private development with two separate courts.There are no bike trails and their are islands in the middle of each court. The garbage truck company told my husband that he had the police report that said that it was a 50/50 fault and he would only pay for half of the bike.He wanted him to sign a release for 40 dollars. The bike was only 3 weeks old. I went to the police department not knowing of my husbands converstation with the garbage company and found that the report was not even ready. My husband noticed that the truck was not equiped with convex mirrors. There was no way he would have ever seen my son unless he got out of the truck and looked. Do you think we have a case? Thanks for any input.

how old is your son?

when the trash truck stopped, how long was it stopped before it began to back up? How close was your son to the trash truck when it stopped?

I don't know exactly how far he was. The other boy was able to move out of the way on his bike. My son fell and got up and ran to the island and watched his bike get run over. There were many kids on bikes in our development at the time. The garbage truck was in the process of emptying the 3rd of 4 dumpsters in our development. He was aware of kids on their bikes.

my son is 6, he was riding next to a 10 year old

take the $40 and be done with it.