Michael Oher, a former Ole Miss standout offensive lineman and subject of the Oscar-winning 2009 film ‘The Blind Side,’ has filed a 14-page petition in Shelby County, Tennessee probate court alleging that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy never adopted him and made millions off of a lie.

The petition, according to ESPN’s Michael A. Fletcher, alleges that less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the Tuohys tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators and giving them legal authority to make business deals in his name.

Chief among those deals was a film in 2009 about Oher’s adoption out of poverty by the Tuohys. According to the petition, the movie paid the Tuohys and their two birth children each $225,000, plus 2.5% of the film’s “defined net proceeds.” The petition alleges that Oher never received any money from the film, which grossed more than $300 million at the box office.

The petition alleges a separate 2007 contract purportedly signed by Oher gives away the life rights to his story “without any payment whatsoever.” The filing says Oher has no recollection of signing that contract, and if he did, no one explained its implications to him.

From the filing, per Fletcher:

“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. 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.”

…

“Since at least August of 2004, Conservators have allowed Michael, specifically, and the public, generally, to believe that Conservators adopted Michael and have used that untruth to gain financial advantages for themselves and the foundations which they own or which they exercise control. All monies made in said manner should in all conscience and equity be disgorged and paid over to the said ward, Michael Oher.”

Oher was a two-time All-American for Ole Miss — the Tuohys’ alma mater — and was a first-round draft pick of the Baltimore Ravens in the 2009 NFL Draft.

He has gone on record before criticizing the film’s depiction of him as well. In 2015, he told ESPN that, “People look at me, and they take things away from me because of a movie. They don’t really see the skills and the kind of player I am.”