OAN’s Brooke Mallory
10:48 AM – Thursday, August 17, 2023
According to the Tuohy family’s attorney, Michael Oher, the ex-NFL star whose story inspired the Oscar-winning film “The Blind Side,” allegedly demanded that his conservatorship family pay him an extra $15 million or he would go public with claims that they swindled him.
Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, according to their legal representative, assert that there is no credibility to Oher’s claims that he was duped into a conservatorship and that the couple made millions off of his life story.
Their attorney also told TMZ Sports that Oher was actually the main offender, threatening to “plant a negative story” about the Tuohys in the press if they did not pay an additional eight-figure sum.
“Over the years, the Tuohys have given Mr. Oher an equal cut of every penny received from ‘The Blind Side,’” said attorney Marty Singer.
“Even recently, when Mr. Oher started to threaten them about what he would do unless they paid him an eight-figure windfall and, as part of that shakedown effort, refused to cash the small profit checks from the Tuohys, they still deposited Mr. Oher’s equal share into a trust account they set up for his son.”
Oher, according to Singer, was dropped as a client by other attorneys, but “has finally found a willing enabler and filed this ludicrous lawsuit as a cynical attempt to drum up attention in the middle of his latest book tour.”
Oher was also part of the Baltimore Ravens 2013 Super Bowl-winning team.
The 37-year-old filed a lawsuit in court in Shelby County, Tennessee, on Monday, alleging that he only recently discovered he was not officially adopted by the Tuohys and that he was placed in a conservatorship, allowing them to retain legal power over him.
Oher claimed that the Tuohys made millions of dollars through the conservatorship as a result of “The Blind Side,” which grossed $300 million at the box office, while he received “nothing.”
Singer and the family adamantly denied the allegations, claiming that the Tuohys “received a small advance from the production company and a tiny percentage of net profits.”
According to Oher’s lawsuit, the couple and their two biological children allegedly earned $225,000 each from the film, plus 2.5% of the “defined net proceeds.”
The attorney also maintained that the family had no reason to defraud Oher since they are already millionaires in their own right thanks to their fast food franchise dealings, which have earned them at least $213 million.
“The notion that a couple worth hundreds of millions of dollars would connive to withhold a few thousand dollars in profit participation payments from anyone—let alone from someone they loved as a son—defies belief,” Singer told the entertainment press.
Additionally, Oher admitted that the couple did explain what the conservatorship would entail for him, but in terms that he now claims were purposefully confusing and hard to understand in legal terms.
“They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account,” Oher added.
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