Former NFL player Michael Oher, whose journey from poverty to football stardom was dramatized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” asked a Tennessee court on Monday to formally end his legal relationship to the family that took her in, claiming she was never adopted and tricked into signing away her decision-making power so the family could make millions of dollars off her life story.
Oher, 37, is seeking to end the conservatorship that began when she was 18, plus the money she says she should have received from the movie, as well as an injunction preventing Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy from using the his name and likeness.
The petition, filed in Shelby County in Tennessee, claims that when she thought she was adopted, the Tuohys encouraged her to sign a conservatorship in which she waived her ability to enter into contracts. . The lawsuit also claims that Oher, who began living with the Tuohys at age 16, unknowingly signed over the rights to her life story to 20th Century Fox in 2007.
Oher’s attorney, J. Gerard Stranch IV, declined to comment beyond what is stated in the lawsuit.
For “The Blind Side,” the hit film starring Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy and Quinton Aaron as Oher, the Tuohys negotiated a contract of $225,000 plus 2.5 percent of future “defined net proceeds ” for themselves and their biological children, the lawsuit said.
Oher said in the lawsuit that he did not receive anything while filming generated more than $300 million of income worldwide.
The Tuohy family did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The New York Times. In an interview with The Daily Memphian on Monday, Sean Tuohy said he was “devastated” to hear about the case and that it was “distressing to think we’re going to make money off of any of our kids.” Tuohy said he was ready to end the conservatorship and that everyone in his family, including Oher, got a fair share of the film, about $14,000.
Sean Tuohy went on to say that the conservatorship was intended to allow Oher to play at the University of Mississippi, where he and his wife attended.
Sean Tuohy Jr., the son of Leigh Anne and Sean, said in an interview with Barstool Sports on Monday that he made “60, 70 grand over the course of the last four, five years” from the movie.
In Tennessee, a conservatorship is defined as an arrangement in which a court removes at least some “decision-making powers and duties” from “a person with a disability who lacks the capacity to make decisions for one or more important places” and assigns those duties. of a conservator or co-conservators. The 2004 order granting Oher’s conservatorship to the Tuohys stated that Oher appeared to have “no known physical or psychological disability.”
According to the petition, Oher only recently learned — in February of this year — that she was not legally adopted. Oher agreed to enter into the conservatorship thinking it was a necessary part of the adoption process, the lawsuit says.
Oher, who retired from football in 2017, was selected with the No. 23 overall pick in the 2009 NFL draft by the Baltimore Ravens and played eight seasons in the NFL as an offensive tackle for the Ravens, Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers. He won the Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2013.
He played college football from 2005 to 2009 at Mississippi, where he earned two first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors, in 2007 and 2008, and was named a consensus first-team all-American in 2008.
“The Blind Side,” released in 2009 and adapted from a 2006 book by Michael Lewis, portrays Oher as a poor teenager growing up in Memphis and taking care of his mother, who is addicted to cocaine. The movie portrays Oher as a naturally gifted athlete, in basketball and football, who was spotted by a coach at a local private school, who later admitted him. Oher knows Sean Tuohy Jr. before moving on with the family and earning a scholarship to Mississippi.
But Oher seems uncomfortable with her portrayal in the film, and what it means for her career. In a 2015 interview, when he was playing for the Panthers, Oher said the movie portrayed him as less intelligent than he was and influenced how people viewed him within the game.
“People look at me and they take things away from me because of a movie,” Oher said. “They never see the skill and the type of player that I am. That’s why I got downgraded so much, because of something off the field.”