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Most people knew The Blind Side took some liberties when it came to adapting the life story of former NFL player Michael Oher to the big screen, but it was still hard not to be a bit surprised by the claims in the lawsuit the retired offensive lineman filed against the family that took him in earlier this week.
Most people operated under the assumption Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy had legally adopted Oher after giving him a place to stay and helping him overcome the academic hurdles that eventually allowed him to play at Ole Miss.
However, the legal filing appeared to imply he’d unknowingly agreed to the conservatorship he claims allowed the family to profit off of his story while he essentially received nothing from a movie that went on to gross more than $300 million at the box office.
With that said, it doesn’t appear that’s actually the case thanks to what Oher had to say in I Beat The Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond, the memoir that he published in 2011.
TMZ decided to revisit that book in the wake of Oher’s accusations (which the Tuhoys initially denied before their attorney took things one step further by accusing him of a “shakedown”) and, well, it’s pretty hard to ignore an excerpt that appears to undermine his primary argument.
Here’s what he had to say about what transpired back in the day:
“Since I was already over the age of eighteen and considered an adult by the state of Tennessee, Sean and Leigh Anne would be named as my ‘legal conservators’
They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account.
Honestly, I didn’t care what it was called. I was just happy that no one could argue that we weren’t legally what we already knew was real: We were a family.”
Only time will tell how this saga will pan out, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see those words surface in court as “Exhibit A” if the case actually goes to trial.