Contractor Insurance Question – Fraudulent Claim

Not sure if this sub is the best place for this question, but if anyone is at all familiar with any situation like this, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

So, I run a Contracting business on the side, as well as my regular job. Licensed and insured. About 6 months ago, a neighbor of a client had claimed that I had messed up their sidewalk. This is NOT TRUE, I can’t stress this enough. The sidewalk in front of their house was in TERRIBLE condition before we had arrived, and was in identical condition when we left.

The issue was that, in order to get to the work on the roof of the clients house, and because of the crazy amount of power lines on their street, we had to drive a part of the Boom Lift over their sidewalk. It did not cause ANY additional damage. We were there for about a week or so doing the work, during which NOTHING was mentioned to us about anything regarding their sidewalk. All of a sudden, on our last day, the police show up. The neighbors called the cops to get my insurance information, claiming we ruined their sidewalk. I was puzzled that they didn’t even say a word about this to me directly, but didn’t mind giving them the information because it was so obvious that it was a baseless claim. I wasn’t even slightly concerned about it.

Before/after pictures clearly show that the sidewalk was in identical condition. Even Google Street View images from a year prior showed that the sidewalk was in 100% identical shape. The client I did the work for also had before/after pictures showing that the sidewalk was in identical shape. Regardless of all of this, my mind was especially blown when the insurance company APPROVED THE CLAIM. The woman who I spoke with from the insurance company basically told me that she was afraid that these people would just continue to escalate the claim if she denied it. The whole thing was insane. Naturally, about 6 months later, and the sidewalk has still not been fixed. I know that they were only after a check, and will never repair the sidewalk. If it were legitimate, any reasonable person would have at least had a conversation with me about it before filing an insurance claim.

Now, I was just informed last week that my insurance company is dropping me because of this. And because of the claim, the quotes I am getting from other companies are almost 10x the previous cost! I literally cannot afford to pay that much for insurance. I’m absolutely furious about all of this. It was so obviously a fraudulent, baseless claim, and now I may be forced to give up a big part of my family’s income because of it. I’m completely unsure of what I can do.

Has anyone ever been through a similar situation? Do I have ANY recourse at all? At the very least, could I somehow try to report these people for clear insurance fraud? I find it hard to believe that someone could just basically put someone out of business by filing a fraudulent insurance claim. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you.