Ex-Marine, Ford shield, files suit

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SAN FRANCISCO (P) Oliver Sipple, the ex-Marine credited with deflecting, an assassin's gun away from President Ford, filed a $15-million invasion of privacy suit yesterday against news media for reporting that he was homosexual.

Sipple's suit said that through news reports. "his brothers and his sisters learned for the first time of his homosexual orientation, and accordingly and consequentially abandoned the-plaintiff." He had never before confirmed his homosexuality.

In addition, the suit said, he "was exposed to contempt and ridicule, causing him great mental anguish, embarrassment and humiliation."

The suit named seven newspapers and their parent companies as well as 50 unnamed persons identified only as publishers of newspapers. magazines or news services.

The only writer specifically named as a defendant was Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, who first alluded to Sipple's gay politics in his daily column.

Newspapers named were the Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times. the Chicago Sun-Times, the Denver Post, the San Antonio Express. the Indianapolis Star and the Des Moines Register.