Disabledbobcat

I'm also a claims adjustor. Yes your mother is at fault. The idea behind this being that your mother was not following at safe distance. You are always supposed to have enough distance to stop in the event that someone stops suddenly for any reason. While it may seem unfair given that some moron cut off the truck driver, it could have been something like a kid running into the road instead.

Edit: This is my opinion as someone sitting on their couch drinking beer, who happens to work as a claims adjustor but is not in anyway evaluating this claim in a professional manner or offering you legal advice.

This is completely illegal and would invite bad faith suits. Bad faith claims open insurance companies up to an unlimited amount of liability. My boss would fire me if I did not pay claims according to what they are actually worth.

We may disagree with you about the value of something. We may go with our idiot insured's statement that you're at fault. But if you have a legitimate claim we will certainly pay you something that we can justify as being fair.

I don't know why people are down voting this guy. In most states you can very easily assess what is called comparative negligence. In some states (Maryland, DC, Virginia, probably more), they have contributory negligence, which effectively means that if you are 1% at fault you cannot collect from the other insurance company.

The same as on the road. The only issue is that the police will often not write reports on private property. All the rules for liability are the same.

GEICO actually writes a ton of these cheap policies. It's called non-standard insurance. It doesn't matter what kind of insurance you have, you will need adjustors. Often non-standard companies get more claims per insured due to the nature of these people. You cannot eliminate these jobs.

Source: I do claims for a non-standard insurance carrier.