LOS ANGELES (AP) - Warren J. Ferguson, a federal judge who helped pave the way for viewers to record TV shows on VCRs and for teenage basketball players to join the NBA in a case involving the Seattle SuperSonics, is dead at age 87.

Ferguson, who was a judge for more than four decades, died June 25 of congestive heart failure at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, said his son, Peter.

Ferguson was a federal judge in California's Central District in 1971 when he ruled in an antitrust case involving the National Basketball Association that was brought by Spencer Haywood, who wanted to sign with Sonics. Ferguson declared illegal an NBA rule that forbade the signing of players until four years after they completed high school, and his ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court.

In another 1970s case Ferguson ruled that VCR manufacturers were not liable for copyright infringement committed by people who used the Sony Betamax recorder to tape TV shows. His decision was reversed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals but the case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that some personal copying of TV shows was legal.

Ferguson's judicial career began in 1959 on the Orange County Municipal Court in Anaheim. He was appointed to the Orange County Superior Court in 1961 and nominated to the U.S. District Court by President Johnson in 1966. President Carter nominated him to the 9th Circuit in 1979 and he remained active on the appeals bench until 1986.

"It was not a job to him, it was a calling," said Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who served with Ferguson on the appeals court.

Ferguson was a "very compassionate and passionate man," Reinhardt recalled, "who really cared about human beings and who thought the purpose of law was justice."

Ferguson was widely regarded as an independent-minded liberal.

"He had a high respect for the law and especially respected precedent," said William A. Norris, a lawyer who was on the 9th Circuit bench with Ferguson for 17 years. "While he had personal views that could fairly be described as liberal, he would not hesitate to decide a case contrary to the way he would have liked to have decided it."