Court case 2 LB 565/17 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The plaintiff would like to inspect the defendant's hunting register, a hunting cooperative. The plaintiff is a member of the defendant. The plaintiff based his claim on the necessity of being able to verify compliance with the corresponding distribution key in view of his claim to payment of the share of the income from the hunting lease to which he was entitled. Furthermore, he stated that he could only meaningfully exercise his membership rights in knowledge of the other members of the Hunting Cooperative. Finally, the plaintiff referred to the Freedom of Information Act of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The defendant refused the requested access in order to protect the personal data of the other members of the hunting cooperative, who would refise to have their addresses published. Nor could it be seen why the plaintiff needed the data in order to be able to assert its claim for a pro rata payment of the defendant's earnings. A member of a hunting cooperative has a claim against the hunting cooperative to inspect the current hunting cadastre of the hunting cooperative, insofar as this contains the names, addresses and size of the areas of the individual hunting companions If these claims cannot be excluded obviously and unambiguously, the Hunting Cooperative owes the hunting companion disclosure of its books and other documents. The type and scope of the documents to which this disclosure extends in detail depends largely on the data required for the effective verification of the respective claim prerequisite The plaintiff is therefore entitled to inspect the hunting cadastre of the defendant, as far as the names of the other hunting companions contained therein, their addresses as well as the information on the size of the respective property areas of the individual owners are concerned. Only on the basis of this information can he effectively exercise his rights as a member of the Hunting Cooperative and thus as part of the General Meeting. It must be possible f