On Tuesday, an attorney for Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy revealed, to widespread shock, that the former NFL player Michael Oher reportedly threatened to manufacture a harmful media story about the Tennessee family unless they paid him an astounding $15 million.
Michael Oher’s charges in his petition to dissolve the conservatorship from 2004 were vehemently shot down by prominent California attorney Martin Singer, who called them “hurtful and nonsensical.” Singer said that anybody with a modicum of common sense could see through the ludicrous allegations and that it defied logic to assume that the Tuohy family, who had accumulated great fortune from their restaurant company, would turn to such methods.
Singer went on to say that the Tuohys’ significant wealth made it repugnant to think of denying a person they considered a son small profit share payments.
Michael Oher said in his petition to end the conservatorship that he was misinformed in 2004 that the process was similar to adoption because of his young age. Oher also claimed that the Tuohys reaped disproportionate financial rewards from “The Blind Side,” in comparison to his own salary, in an interview with The New York Times.
The family’s lawyer pushed back, saying Oher had earned his fair share of the nearly $300 million in revenues from the blockbuster picture. The family is dedicated to receiving proper recompense, the lawyer said.
Singer also claimed that Oher tried to blackmail the Tuohys for $15 million by threatening to leak damaging information about them to the press.
The biological son of Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, Sean “SJ” Tuohy Jr., made the charges by saying that Oher may have known about his non-adoptive status as early as 2020, based on text exchanges between Oher and the family.
Singer closed by saying the Tuohys had been honest about why they set up the conservatorship and would completely back Oher’s decision to dissolve it. Oher’s family cared deeply for him, and they still do, but they are unwavering in their commitment to clearing their name and countering what they see as an unjustified case.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Oher’s attorney Gerard Stranch for comment, but as of this writing, Stranch had not provided any.