Relatives may be entitled to inspect a police file on a missing person and may assert this right before the administrative courts. This was decided by the Baden-Württemberg Administrative Court (VGH) (decision of 27 August 2026 – 10 S 581/26). At the same time, the judges indicated how AI-generated legal submissions might be dealt with in future if they have been adopted more or less unchecked from a language model.

In this case, the next of kin of a man who had been found dead some three months after his disappearance requested access to the files relating to the police search. The public prosecutor’s office had previously closed the inquest into the death, granted access to its own files and referred the family to the police headquarters regarding the documents still held by the police. The police headquarters rejected the request for access on the grounds that the operational tactics had to remain confidential. The state, which was subsequently sued before the Freiburg Administrative Court, argued that the missing persons file constituted evidence in the criminal proceedings and that, therefore, jurisdiction lay not with the Administrative Court but with the Higher Regional Court.

The Freiburg Administrative Court took a different view, and the Higher Administrative Court has now upheld this ruling:

The family could rely on the State Freedom of Information Act (LIFG). Whilst the Act does not apply to the police insofar as they are investigating criminal offences, in the search for the missing person they had acted to avert danger and were therefore acting under public law. Nor do the rights of access under criminal procedure for injured parties preclude this, as these rights are directed at the public prosecutor’s office and not at the police. It is now for the Administrative Court to determine in this case whether the operational tactics actually require confidentiality.

„In essence, the ruling strengthens access to information vis-à-vis the police: if the authorities acted to avert danger, they cannot evade the Freedom of Information Act by subsequently classifying the file as part of criminal proceedings,“ explains Rechtsanwalt’s Michael Jessen-Lieberum.

However, the decision also contains a comment on the use of AI: the Senate had „certain doubts“ as to whether a written submission from the state could be taken into account at all. This is because, judging by its outward appearance, it merely reproduced the responses of an AI system without indicating this and without including any comments of its own from the Department for Legal Affairs and Data Protection at the Constance Police Headquarters, which was authorised to represent the state in this case. However, the requirement for representation by a Rechtsanwalt or other authorised representative before the Higher Administrative Courts (Section 67(4) of the Administrative Court Rules (VwGO)) demands that legal representatives themselves review, examine and analyse the subject matter of the dispute from a legal perspective. Anyone using a language model in this context must independently review the generated text and must not simply adopt the output as their own without scrutiny. The Higher Administrative Court was ultimately able to leave open the question of whether the written submission was in fact irrelevant in this specific case, as the State’s appeal was unsuccessful in any event.

According to Michael Jessen-Lieberum of Rechtsanwalt, these comments are of interest to every legal representative: „When dealing with AI-generated pleadings, the Higher Administrative Court had already relied on the case law of the Federal Administrative Court at the start of the year (BVerwG, decision of 30 July 2012 – 5 PKH 8/12): A written submission, a substantial part of which is not the responsibility of the person authorised to represent the party but has merely been drafted by a third party (or, in this case, an AI), may be invalid as a procedural act if there is a requirement for legal representation in the proceedings.“