'The Blind Side' Subject Michael Oher Gets Ruling from Judge on Conservatorship with Foster Parents
Former NFL player Michael Oher, the subject of the hit 2009 film “The Blind Side,” has received an outcome he was looking for in his court case against his foster family.
On Friday, Shelby County, Tennessee, Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes terminated the conservatorship agreement Oher signed in 2004 with Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, The Associated Press reported.
Oher agreed to the conservatorship when he was 18 after the Tuohys took him in as a homeless high schooler. He is now 37.
Gomes said she was shocked the agreement was ever reached.
In Tennessee, a conservatorship is usually only approved if the subject is disabled or otherwise unfit to make decisions, according to the AP.
Oher’s petition to have the conservatorship terminated said it was approved “despite the fact that he was over 18 years old and had no diagnosed physical or psychological disabilities.”
The AP reported that lawyers on both sides of the dispute agreed that the conservatorship should end.
Oher is still seeking a full accounting of the money the Tuohys made from “The Blind Side” and the payment of any money they may owe him, with interest.
He has accused the Tuohys of pocketing profits that should have gone to him and lying about having legally adopted him.
He claims he only recently learned the full details of the family’s legal relationship to him despite his own book, “I Beat the Odds,” acknowledging that the Tuohys were made his conservators, not his adoptive parents.
For their part, the Tuohys accuse Oher of perpetrating a “shakedown” against them. The family is independently wealthy even without any money made from Oher’s story.
Martin Singer, an attorney for the Tuohys, has called Oher’s allegations “outlandish,” saying in a statement that “the idea that the family ever sought to profit off Mr. Oher is not only offensive, it is transparently ridiculous.”
“They have consistently treated him like a son and one of their three children. His response was to threaten them, including saying that he would plant a negative story about them in the press unless they paid him $15 million,” Singer said.
The Touhys’ attorneys say they all pulled in about $100,000 — including Oher — when “The Blind Side” came out in 2009 and that the Tuohys paid Oher’s taxes from that windfall.
The Tuohys do admit that they called Oher their son, but they said in a court filing that they used the term in a “colloquial sense” and “never intended that reference to be viewed with legal implication.”
They say they became Oher’s conservators so that he would be eligible to play football at the University of Mississippi.
Oher was the 23rd overall pick in the 2009 NFL draft and played for the Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers. He was part of the 2013 Ravens team that won Super Bowl XLVII.
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