Michael Oher, central character of “The Blind Side”, seeks legal intervention to prevent a Tennessee couple from profiting from his name, image, and likeness. This was revealed in a motion submitted by his legal team and obtained by Bloomberg Law.
Oher’s trajectory from homeless teen to NFL’s first-round draft pick gained further traction through the Oscar-winning movie ‘The Blind Side’, which detailed his journey under the guardianship of Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy. This couple, he mistakenly believed, had adopted him, thus sparking the present legal clashes.
The legal documents highlight: “The Former Co-Conservators continue to misuse Mr. Oher’s NIL and to perpetuate false claims that they adopted him, even though the Former Co-Conservators have admitted in Court documents that they are not and have never been Mr. Oher’s adoptive parents.” Earlier this year, Oher negated the family narrative via a court filing, asserting that the Tuohys never adopted him formally but simply established a conservatorship in 2004.
Subsequently, a Tennessee judge terminated the conservatorship but allowed Oher to pursue his quest to hold the Tuohys accountable for their management of his conservatorship. According to Oher’s lawyers, the Tuohys persist in benefitting financially from his name and the fallacy that Oher is their adopted son.
In order to protect his name, image, and likeness (NIL), Oher is seeking a temporary injunction against the couple, constraining them, “from persisting in commercially using his name, image, and likeness, often in conjunction with the continuing false claims that they adopted Mr. Oher, and are his adoptive parents.”
In response to these allegations, the Tuohys have insisted they only have Oher’s best interests at heart. According to their statements, they transferred over $138,000 to Oher, generated from the movie and related book earnings. They insist they did not receive any money while acting as his conservators.
Furthermore, Oher’s filing alleges that when he was 18, the Tuohys secured the conservatorship through fraudulent misrepresentation to his biological mother. The affidavit from Denise Oher, his birth mother, included in the filing indicates she was under the impression that the documents she was signing did not involve conservatorship or adoption.
Unfortunately, the Oher case sheds light on the lax rules and scant oversight in the US conservatorship systems as previously detailed in a Bloomberg Law series this year.
Moreover, it was found that the Tuohys, during their tenure as his conservators, never submitted reports to the court. The judge handling the case confessed to Bloomberg Law that he doesn’t recall any paperwork associated with Oher’s case crossing his desk. Read more here.