A Brain Tumor Can't Break An Apartment Lease [View All]

http://www.wreg.com/Global/story.asp?S=3151679&nav=3HvEY93b


MEMPHIS -- A Cordova woman will have to pay an apartment complex a quarter of the cost of her 12-month lease, despite a terminal brain tumor that forced her to move back in with her mother.

One month after she signed a year-long lease with Rock Creek Apartments at 8150 Rock Creek Parkway in Cordova, 21-year-old Catherine Needham was diagnosed with the worst kind of brain tumor there is -- the same kind that killed celebrity attorney Johnnie Cochran. Pounding headaches and endless rounds of chemotherapy left her unable to work or care for herself. She had to move back home with her mother Margaret in Bartlett.

Margaret Needham says she wrote Rock Creek's parent company, The Sunshine Corporation at 5575 Poplar Avenue, Suite 414 in East Memphis, asking the company to make an exception and let Catherine out of the rest of her lease due to the terminal illness.

"I never got a response," says Margaret. "The only thing they would send me is bills and charges, and most of them were bogus." The Sunshine Corporation's president, Leonard Richman, sued the Needhams for the balance of the lease, plus attorney's fees. Richman says he is limited to what he can discuss about the case, but he maintains his company is sensitive to tenants with special needs or who are sick like Catherine Needham.