The lawsuit filed by former tackle Michael Oher against the adoptive family that didn’t really adopt him has become the biggest story in the NFL. It also has become the latest grist for our sharply polarized political mill, with the two sides of the hopeless divide resorting to their predictable corners and shouting their predictable arguments at each other.
We’ve apparently ended up in the middle of it, inadvertently, simply by pointing out that, if the Tuohy family still loves Oher like a son, they shouldn’t have authorized their lawyer to issue to TMZ a blistering statement attacking Oher’s character (which the statement clearly does).
“Are they not supposed to defend themselves?” plenty said in response. They have every right to defend themselves. But there’s a proper channel for defending themselves. It’s through the same court system that Oher used to make his claims.
The public attack on Oher is similar to the one the Cardinals made against former executive Terry McDonough after he initiated a legal proceeding against the team earlier this year. Gratuitous, personal, mean-spirited. And definitely not rooted in familial love.
While it’s undeniable that the view of what it means to properly defend oneself has become warped over the past, you know, eight years and two months, with more and more people viewing gratuitous, personal, and mean-spirited public attacks as an acceptable accessory to the normal channels for mounting a legal defense, the point stands. If, as Sean Tuohy told the Daily Memphian in the immediate aftermath of the filing of Oher’s lawsuit, “we’re going to love Michael at 37 just like we loved him at 16,” that love reasonably should not include the public statement their lawyer made on their behalf. It should include a private effort to get together with the man they still love like a son and work it out.
The problem with any story landing squarely in our national red-blue crevasse is that basic facts get lost in the white noise. And this case has one basic fact that bears watching as the litigation proceeds.
Regarding the key question of whether Oher was tricked into agreeing to a conservatorship and not an adoption, Sean Tuohy said this: “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.”
As multiple journalists have noted, including Larry Holder of TheAthletic.com, that statement does not mesh with Tennessee law. Under the relevant statute, adoption of persons 18 and older is expressly contemplated.
There’s another key question that likely will play out in the early stages of the Tuohy’s official effort to defend themselves. To the extent Oher wants to reach back more than a few years and recover money from the Tuohys that was received from The Blind Side, a statute of limitations argument is quite possibly coming. Oher’s pre-emptive claim that he first discovered that he was fooled into something other than adoption in February 2023 fits with the usual pattern that plays out when a plaintiff is bracing for a claim that he waited too long to sue.
And Oher quite possibly waited too long to sue. That’s unrelated to the core arguments made in the case, but it could short circuit much of the litigation.
Regardless, on the critical question of whether the Tuohys could have actually adopted Oher despite the fact that he was over 18, Sean Tuohy either got bad information from a lawyer and never bothered to learn the truth — or Tuohy knows the truth and isn’t telling it.