Michael Oher: NFL participant who impressed Oscar-winning film The Blind Side sues household who took him in
A former NFL participant who impressed the Oscar-winning movie The Blind Side has begun authorized motion over papers he signed almost 20 years in the past.
Michael Oher, 37, filed a petition in a Tennessee court docket accusing Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy of mendacity to him when he signed papers making them his conservators – which he thought would additionally make them his adoptive dad and mom.
He needs the settlement terminated and compensation based mostly on the hundreds of thousands earned off his title and story.
Oher performed eight seasons within the NFL after being drafted in 2009, and received a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens.
Sandra Bullock received an Oscar for taking part in Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side, which dramatised how the Tuohys took in Oher when he was a homeless teenager and helped him flourish.
The movie was additionally nominated for finest image on the 2010 awards.
However, Oher has now accused the household of enriching themselves by “falsely and publicly” representing themselves as his adoptive dad and mom.
The authorized papers say he discovered in February “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”.
“At no point did the Tuohys inform Michael that they would have ultimate control of all his contracts, and as a result Michael did not understand that if the conservatorship was granted, he was signing away his right to contract for himself,” the petition claims.
The submitting alleges the household entered right into a film deal for the rights to his story for $225,000 plus 2.5% of future proceeds.
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However, it says that whereas the signature on the 2007 contract is just like his personal, he “at no time ever willingly or knowingly signed this document and… nobody ever presented this contract to him with any explanation that he was signing such a document”.
The Blind Side made greater than $300m (£236m) worldwide, in accordance with the Internet Movie Database.
A lawyer for the Tuohys declined to remark however mentioned they’d be offering the court docket with a response to the allegations.
The challenge of conservatorships – a means for somebody to imagine authorized guardianship over an grownup if they can not make choices themselves – got here to the fore two years in the past when Britney Spears was launched from one which stopped her making her personal medical and monetary choices.