I'm hoping that there is a lot more to this story than meets the eye but on first glance it really seems like Michael Oher is being an extremely ungrateful POS with this lawsuit against the family that basically saved his life and gave him the opportunity to become rich and famous. With the Tuohy's intervention in his life as depicted in the film, it is quite easy to assume that Mike would just be someone that we never heard of and ended up like many of the other people from broken homes.
I put "adoptive" in quotes above because as it turns out the Tuohy's didn't adopt Michael because he was already 18. The movie presented is as if they had and even Michael was unaware of the fact that he wasn't legally adopted by them until earlier this year. The Tuohy's on the other hand say that they were very up front with Michael about what was happening legally, and he didn't have a problem with it when it was going on.
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If you haven't seen the movie you really should. The blockbuster film starring Sandra Bullock is really a fantastic film and according to what little I have read very little of it is made up. The Tuohy family was a rather well-to-do bunch that took "big Mike" into their home and their lives and gave him a real chance at a future. They provided him with tutors to turn his academic life around and got him into private schools where his athletic abilities would have a chance to get him noticed. This resulted later in him getting many offers for full athletic scholarships to a number of universities and eventually landed him with the Baltimore Ravens where he was paid millions to play football in the NFL.
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The final years of his time in the NFL he played for my own state's Carolina Panthers and it is my understanding that he did quite well. I don't know for sure because I don't follow sports that closely.
So the reason for the lawsuit is over money of course and Michael is asking the courts to end the conservatorship that they had over Michael's life and I am not going to pretend to know what that actually means. I believe it is something similar to what Brittney Spear's father had over her so if the Tuohys did in fact use this ability to have some control over his name to make money than I guess there would at least be some merit to this.
The bad stuff happens when rumors start popping up about how Michael threatened the family that he would take them to court if they didn't give him $15 million. That is all just speculation and I really hope it didn't happen.
There are two things that could have happened here. The Tuohys actually DID trick Michael into signing over the rights to his name and likeness to them for profit, or they actually were just interested in protecting him and his finances.
The Tuohys have stated publicly that they didn't make "much" from the film and any other of the money that was made from Michael Oher's story, but we need to keep in mind that they are a very wealthy family so "not much" might mean something very different to them then it would to you or I.
The family also claims that all monies made from everything was split 5 ways between Michael, Mr and Mrs. Tuohy as well as their 2 biological children. Michael denies that he was ever paid anything and if that is true, I'm going to end up being on Michael's side on this to a certain degree.
This doesn't eliminate the feeling that I have of a bit of animosity towards Michael though because the story of the Blind Side wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Tuohy's intervention in his life. I guess I just feel like a little bit (or a lot) of gratitude is kind of owed here and this lawsuit seems disrespectful to me. He has a net worth of an estimated $16 million and I think it is pretty safe to presume that this figure would be dramatically lower if the Tuohy's hadn't shown such compassion to him when he was a teenager.
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. I hope that both sides can come to an agreement and this doesn't tarnish the otherwise lovely story of their lives.