Back in 2009, football star Michael Oher became a household name when he was the subject of a 2009 film called The Blind Side which detailed his apparent adoption by a wealthy white family to lift him out of poverty. But Oher is now claiming that a key portion of this story was a lie by the family to enrich themselves at his expense.
As reported by ESPN on Monday morning, Michael Oher has filed a petition alleging that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who took Oher into their home as a high school student, never actually adopted him. Instead, the suit claims that they tricked him into making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.
“The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” the legal filing says, according to ESPN. “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the Conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys.”
The suit claims that the family used his conservatorship to earn millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film while he himself received nothing.
[ESPN]
