Bartz v. Wheat

Neely, Justice:

This case presents the question of whether a defendant in an automobile accident case may use the family purpose doctrine to impute the contributory negligence of the driver of the plaintiffs vehicle to the plaintiff-owner to bar recovery for damages to the car by the plaintiff. We hold that, consistent with the purposes behind our family purpose doctrine, he may not.

On 1 August 1974 Rickey Joe Bartz was riding a motorcycle owned by his father, Martin Bartz, Sr., on Route 67 in Brooke County. Rickey was following a car driven by John Wheat when he noticed that the car was…