West Virginia Supreme Court January 15, 1982, 14367 (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.