Sean Tuohy responds to ‘The Blind Side’ subject Michael Oher’s petition
On Monday evening, Sean Tuohy gave an interview to the Daily Memphian, responding to the news that Michael Oher filed a petition alleging that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy never adopted him and that he didn’t profit from the film “The Blind Side,” while the Tuohys did, per ESPN.
The NFL veteran and subject of “The Blind Side” (2009) filed a petition on Monday stating Oher was seeking “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,” according to ESPN.
“The Blind Side” chronicles the story of how Oher was a homeless teenager taken in by the Tuohy family. In the film, they hired a tutor to help him get his grades up so he could go on to play college football and, eventually, be drafted into the NFL.
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Tuohy said a friend sent him the ESPN article on Monday morning. “We’re devastated. It’s upsetting to think we would make money off any of our children. But we’re going to love Michael at 37 just like we loved him at 16,” Tuohy told the Daily Memphian.
As for the allegation that the Tuohys profited from the film, Tuohy said to the Daily Memphian, “We didn’t make any money off the movie. Well, Michael Lewis (the author of the book ‘The Blind Side’) gave us half of his share. Everyone in the family got an equal share, including Michael. It was about $14,000 each.”
Tuohy told the Daily Memphian the NCAA told him if Oher wanted to go to Ole Miss, he had to be part of the family. “We contacted lawyers who had told us that we couldn’t adopt over the age of 18; the only thing we could do was to have a conservatorship. We were so concerned it was on the up-and-up that we made sure the biological mother came to court,” Tuohy said.
The Tuohy family’s attorney, Steve Farese, said “the family would file a legal response to the allegations in the coming weeks,” ESPN reported.
