OT: Remember Michael Oher and the Blindside? It's Britney Spears all over again...
If anyone is unaware, Michael Oher was a high school kid adopted by a white family and went on to play college football at Ole Miss and in the NFL. Turns out he wasn't adopted at all and Oher is now suing the family. Rather, he claims he was tricked into signing a conservatorship which basically gave the family full control over his finances. He wants a share of the millions in earnings the family is alleged to have received from the book/movie. I'm sure there is more.
"The lie of Michael's adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher," the legal filing says. "Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that 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 with the Tuohys."
Oher's petition asks the court to end the Tuohys' conservatorship and to issue an injunction barring them from using his name and likeness. It also seeks a full accounting of the money the Tuohys earned using Oher's name, and to have the couple pay him his fair share of profits, as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Crazy stuff...
August 14th, 2023 at 2:10 PM ^
So does Sandra have to give the Oscar back now?
August 14th, 2023 at 2:16 PM ^
Sounds like the situation is pretty Toxic. Although you might think Oher is Lucky, all things considered, Sometimes there's a pretty drastic divergence in how an adoptee and his adopted family perceive his childhood. Oher probably thinking "I'm a Slave 4 U" in terms of the financial arrangement, and the Tuohys are thinking that he's just saying Gimme More for no apparent reason.
August 14th, 2023 at 2:20 PM ^
You can take Oher's side or the Tuohy's side here. Heck, there are probably 45-23 other sides from which to view this story.
August 14th, 2023 at 2:25 PM ^
Obligatory.
August 14th, 2023 at 4:17 PM ^
Uh, wasn't she like 16 in that music video?
August 14th, 2023 at 2:30 PM ^
When my mother died in 1999 me and my brother were to split her life insurance policy. I received $10,000 and went on my way.
In 2003 my grandmother informed me that I was supposed to receive $20,000 out of the $50,000 payout. She gave me $12,000 out of her own pocket. He kept the $10,000 I was supposed to receive in 1999.
He stills owes me $9300.
People saying that how did Oher not know? The simple answer is that he trusted people he saw as family to deal honestly with him. Unfortunately, as I can attest to, that isn’t always the case when it comes to money.
The Tuohy’s are trash. Trash, trash, trash.
August 14th, 2023 at 2:42 PM ^
This was a disturbing read. Those people are evil.
August 14th, 2023 at 3:22 PM ^
It's hard not to be a self-hating white guy when we pull this kind of sh** all the time.
August 14th, 2023 at 4:23 PM ^
If you're a self-hating white guy because another white person did something bad, then I humbly suggest that you're looking at it the wrong way. No one should assume anything about your personal ethics and virtue based on the color of your skin. If anything, adopting that mindset perpetuates an inaccurate and prejudiced way of viewing the world and isn't helpful to anyone.
If there's any dynamic at play here, it's more likely that of a rich family taking advantage of a poor kid rather than an explicitly racist dynamic.
August 14th, 2023 at 6:01 PM ^
Just another example of fake Southern hospitality.
August 14th, 2023 at 8:45 PM ^
as opposed to what? the real southern hospitality i experience all the time?
August 15th, 2023 at 7:16 AM ^
Understanding the neuroscience of bias and racism doesn't make you a self-hating white guy. There's ample evidence of racist bias in multiple fields and that's on you if you choose to ignore that due to whatever weird insecurity this is.
August 14th, 2023 at 4:37 PM ^
What they did is definitely shitty, but if it makes you loathe yourself, because your skin pigmentation vaguely resembles theirs ... that's a bit unhealthy.
August 14th, 2023 at 4:57 PM ^
Be proud of what you accomplish, not what you were born with/as.
August 14th, 2023 at 5:32 PM ^
Damn, that brush you paint with is pretty broad.
August 15th, 2023 at 11:32 AM ^
You don't have to hate yourself 🤨. You are not associated with their actions simply because of your skin color any more than a black man is associated with the acts of one black person. That's what racism is: associating the acts of one to many simply because of skin color. Eradicating racism in all its forms also means loving yourself and not seeing yourself aligned by skin.
Bless you, and grow and love yourself. 💕
August 14th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
I wonder if this has anything to do with pre NIL ncaa rules. I don't know the timeline of the book being published and Michael still being on the Ole Miss football team. Seems to me he wouldn't be able to get profits from the book while still in school. The conservatorship was a way around that. I can see that being how it started.
August 14th, 2023 at 4:41 PM ^
Sounds like he was blindsided
August 14th, 2023 at 5:50 PM ^
Never got how people liked that movie, much less how it got two Oscar nominations. It was such an unoriginal and cringingly paternalistic story, it was both boring and painful to watch. Knowing that half of it wasn't even true makes it even worse.
August 14th, 2023 at 7:02 PM ^
The scene of her interrupting football practice to teach Michael how to play with more aggression was especially lame.
August 14th, 2023 at 8:05 PM ^
It looks bad, maybe it is bad. That being said, they began the conservatorship in 2004, 5 years and and entire college career before he even entered the NFL and the film came out. He could have just ridden the bench as an anonymous backup at Ole Miss and gone on to something else, in which case this wouldn't be a story (or a movie).
August 14th, 2023 at 9:47 PM ^
This lawsuit almost certainly will be lost....but the National Enquirer version of the facts, family just faked adopting him to steal all his money will now be the common understanding and Blindside will no longer be repeatedly shown every Fall weekend on any channel without an actual sporting event.
August 15th, 2023 at 11:37 AM ^
Wrong. He was a prized senior recruit in 2004. The markings of his success were already well-known when they got him to sign.
August 15th, 2023 at 6:42 PM ^
How many "prized senior recruits" wind up in the NFL, or even starting a game in college? Maybe they were hedging their bets, but his success was by no means a sure thing in 2004. The movie certainly wasn't even on the horizon at that point.
August 15th, 2023 at 9:31 AM ^
Fake news. Text messages show Oher knew long before and tried to extort money. Next.
August 16th, 2023 at 2:01 AM ^
There is always two sides to every story.
But here, they did set up and still do have the very suspicious conservatorship. And he has to sue to end it. That would be tough for them to defend, when they lied about being adoptive parents.
Further, we can make a very long list of people who’s lawyers claimed it was a shake down. Every famous athlete that has been sued for sexual assault has used that defense. Remember Kobe. Trump. That’s the first strategy in the lawyer handbook
I was once ripped off by someone who every time my wife and I reached out, the response was always yes of course we will get to it. It was always BS. So it is absolutely possible he tried forever to work with them and he got stonewalled. Could he have said “if nothing happens, he’s suing them and going public.” Absolutely.
August 17th, 2023 at 11:59 AM ^
Seems as though there is one side and Mr. Oher is not looking good...
August 16th, 2023 at 12:03 PM ^
I'll reserve judgment on what really went on rather than rely on battling press releases.
August 17th, 2023 at 2:45 PM ^
This one didn't age too well.