As part of the ongoing legal battle between Michael Oher and the Tuohy family, the Tuohys have told a judge in Tennessee that they will be removing any reference to "adopting" Oher from their public materials. An attorney for the family said that the contentious claim will be removed from the family's website and their public speaking materials. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Tuohys had never legally adopted Oher. Instead, they had placed Oher into a conservatorship. Furthermore, they allegedly went as far as to tell Oher that it was essentially the same thing as an adoption.
It's the first major update in the trial since the Tuohys claimed that Oher, contrary to his claims, had been paid for The Blind Side. Earlier this month, Attorneys for the Tuohy family claim that Michael Oher made $138K in profits from The Blind Side between June 2007 and April 2023. According to documents, these payments ranged from $117 to $31,500. "By agreement between the family members including Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, their children SJ and Collins as well as Michael Oher. The book and movie proceeds were to be split five ways. These funds represent funds paid to Mr. Tuohy and the portion paid over to Mr. Oher," the family's attorneys argued. Oher's team has since disputed this. This week, they stated that at least $2.5M is missing from the financial report submitted by the Tuohys.
The Blind Side Author Blames Oher's NFL Career For Current Lawsuit
However, Oher's ongoing lawsuit has been blamed on CTE by the original author of The Blind Side book. Michael Lewis, the man who first brought Oher's story to the national spotlight, made some bold claims about why Oher had taken the Tuohys to court. “What we’re watching is a change of behaviour. This is what happens to football players who get hit in the head. They run into problems with violence and aggression," Lewis told Samanth Subramanian of The Guardian. Lewis also made some wild claims about Oher's ability. “He insisted that Oher wouldn’t have made it to the NFL without the Tuohys’ support. And that Oher did not, in fact, know much about playing football when the Tuohys first met him. On a football field, “he was not useful”, Lewis said," Subrmanian's article also noted.
However, Lewis' claims of CTE and subpar talent are nothing more than a smokescreen. Lewis is a close friend of Sean Tuohy. The two grew up together and had a relationship before Lewis chronicled Oher's journey in the blindside. The claims of CTE try to distract from the horrific allegations tying a white family to manipulating a Black teenager. Meanwhile, the talent allegations are meaningless. This is given the facts of Oher's story as well as the fact that Lewis felt the story notable enough to dedicate most of a book to it.
Read More: Michael Oher Claims “The Blind Side” Falsely Portrayed Him As Having Intellectual Disabilities
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