Laurel Beeler
How Judge Beeler decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
An unopposed motion supported by a clean record is readily recommended for grant: where a patent defendant does not oppose a motion to amend infringement contentions, she will summarily recommend granting it without a full good-cause analysis.
“Where, as here, a defendant does not oppose a motion to amend ICs, “the Court need not determine whether [plaintiff] has shown good cause for amending its infringement contentions” and may summarily grant the motion to amend.”
Procedural preferences
On pro se screenings, Beeler tests threshold requirements (subject-matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, venue) before reaching the merits, and will give a plaintiff repeated chances to amend before recommending dismissal -- but recommends dismissal once amendment would be futile.
“The case should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction and venue, without prejudice to filing it in another forum. ... These issues would normally allow a final opportunity to amend, but would be futile due to the issues with venue and jurisdiction.”
Motion outcomes
Counted from classified signed orders only. Percentages are shown only where the sample is large enough to be meaningful; smaller samples are reported as raw counts.
| Screening or pleading dismissal recommendation N = 2 |
counts only | |
| Default judgment recommendation N = 1 |
counts only | |
| Enforce settlement recommendation N = 1 |
counts only | |
| Amend infringement contentions recommendation N = 1 |
counts only |
A "1 of 1" is one ruling, not a tendency. Treat small samples as illustrative, not predictive.
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“On May 23, 2025, Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler issued a report and recommendation that the Court grant Plaintiff Pasha Hawaii Holdings LLC's motion for default judgment and enter judgment for Plaintiff in the amount of $74,288.20. ... No party has filed an objection, so the Court adopts Judge Beeler's report and recommendation and grants Pasha Hawaii Holdings' motion for default judgment.”
“the Report and Recommendation (“Report”) prepared by Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler, in which she recommends that the Court grant Plaintiffs' motion to enforce the settlement agreement. ... The Court finds the Report thorough and well reasoned and adopts it in every respect. Accordingly, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' motion to enforce the settlement agreement.”
“The Court has reviewed Judge Laurel Beeler's Report and Recommendation Re: Screening Order and notes there are no objections to the Report. The Court adopts the Report in every respect. Accordingly, this case is dismissed with prejudice.”
“The case should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction and venue, without prejudice to filing it in another forum. ... The court directs the Clerk of Court to reassign the case to a district judge and recommends that the newly assigned district judge dismiss the case.”
“For the foregoing reasons, the undersigned recommends that the court grant Aavid's unopposed motion to amend its ICs.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Beeler's docket caseload under assigned_judge='Laurel D. Beeler' (2022 filed window, plus current 2026 pending sample). As a magistrate she is the initially-assigned judge in San Francisco; her docket mixes employment/labor (incl. ERISA trust-fund collections), immigration mandamus, consumer (TCPA, fraud), copyright (Strike 3), patent, civil-rights/pro-se screenings, FSIA, and criminal magistrate duties (search/seizure warrants, -mj matters). Durations are filing-to-termination case durations, NOT motion-to-ruling latency.