Staten Island Mother Sues the City for $900 Trillion for Wrongfully Placing Her Two Sons in Foster Care

Fausat Ogunbayo Suing City for $900 Trillion for Placing Children in Foster Home

February 7, 2012

Huffington Post - A Staten Island mother is suing the city for a staggering $900 trillion for allegedly wrongfully placing her two sons in foster care and claiming she was mentally unstable.

46-year old Fausat Ogunbayo, who is representing herself, says the Administration for Children's Services's decision to place her children in foster care infringed upon her civil rights and ultimately inflicted "over three years of terror, horror, grievous harm, time lost, substantial economic hardship and injuries."

The children, then 12 and 10-years old, have been out of their mother's custody since June 2008.

In court papers, the ACS references several peculiar incidents where Ogunbayo sought out medical treatment because she believed her children's skin color was becoming darker due to radiation. In a separate episode, the mother allegedly told school officials the FBI was after the boys.

While the city is contending Ogunbayo suffered from such hallucinations and in addition was an absent mother, a separate legal case last month ruled in favor of Ogunbayo with the court stating no substantial evidence indicating the children were ever in "imminent danger" while in their mother's care.

The Staten Island Advance reports that in fact, the two children had near-perfect school attendance and were "even thriving academically."

However, the mother claims that the ACS has yet to return her children to her care.

As for Ogunbayo's $900 trillion demand, Forbes provides some perspective:

The largest City settlement to an individual is $18,278,000 to James McMillan who suffered paralyzing injuries in the 2003 Staten Island Ferry dock crash that killed 11 passengers...And the national debt is $15 trillion.

Mother Sues City for $900 Trillion–Yes, Trillion–for Placing Children in Foster Care

February 8, 2012

The Sideshow - A Staten Island mom is making national headlines today after suing the city of West Brighton for $900 trillion, alleging the city improperly placed her two children in foster care.

The $900 trillion figure, first reported by SILive.com, certainly is staggering and the standard response so far has been to treat the lawsuit as something of a joke, focusing on the mother's alleged mental illness.

But I have to agree with the Inquisitr's Kim LaCapria, who says plaintiff Fausat Ogunbayo is actually quite clever in choosing to sue for $900 trillion. After all, how many people would be reading about this story and discussing Ogunbayo's plight had she quietly filed her petition without seeking monetary compensation?

Of course there's no way she'll get a settlement remotely approaching that number, if she is awarded anything at all. After all, the entire U.S. has an annual gross national income of just over $14 trillion. Or, put another way, if Ogunbayo was awarded $900 trillion she'd have enough disposable income to pay off the U.S. national debt several hundred times over.

Ogunbayo sued the city and the Administration for Children's Services (ACS), alleging that both entities violated her and her children's civil liberties by placing them in foster care in June 2008. In her lawsuit, obtained by The Smoking Gun, Ogunbayo listed her grievances as follows:

"For causing plaintiff substantial economic hardship; for causing plaintiff substantial economic injuries; for depriving plaintiff and plaintiff children's Civil Right, 42 U.S.C. section 1983; for depriving plaintiff and plaintiff's children, the right to family integrity; for depriving plaintiff and plaintiff's children, the right to life, liberty, property and the right guaranteed by statute; for disregarding the probability of plaintiff's children, suffering emotional and mental distress."

The city has not responded to Ogunbayo's lawsuit but contends that she is mentally ill and unable to properly care for her two boys, who are now teenagers. The New York City Law Department released a statement to ABC News, which said,

"We are unable to comment on pending litigation. The amount a plaintiff requests in a lawsuit has no bearing on whether the case has any merit and no relation to actual damages if any."

The state alleges Ogunbayo suffers from hallucinations, refuses mental health treatment and placed her children at risk by leaving them at home for several hours each day. Two of the more specific allegations are that Ogunbayo wrote to her children's former school, insisting that the FBI and Secret Service were after her children and that their skin was becoming darker due to radiation exposure.

However, the state Appellate Division recently threw out a family court finding that Ogunbayo was guilty of neglecting her children.

"Proof of mental illness alone will not support a finding of neglect," the court ruled, according to SILive.com

Ogunbayo is representing herself in the case.