A NEW YORK MOTHER has launched an ambitious lawsuit against the city over claims that city authorities wrongfully removed her children from her care – seeking no less than $900 TRILLION dollars in damages.

Fausat Ogunbayo, a 46-year-old from Staten Island, says the city and its Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) violated her civil rights and those of her family by taking her two sons (aged 12 and 10) out of her care.

SILive.com reports that the children have remained out of her care in the meantime, with city authorities claiming Ogunbayo is mentally unstable and had refused treatment for hallucinations and delusions.

The city also claims that Ogunbayo had regularly left her children – now aged 16 and 13 – alone unsupervised while she was out at work. She claims the allegations are a “huge lie”.

Last month, in a separate case, a state appeals court threw out a previous Family Court finding of neglect against her, saying there had been no evidence of the children being in any “imminent danger” while in their mother’s care.

Although the court heard that Ogunbayo does have a history of mental illness, which she refuses to acknowledge, it said her illness was not enough by itself to warrant removing her children.

That court ordered that the boys be returned to her care, but the children have not been returned as the ACS has filed a new petition in the meantime.

The largest victory won by any individual in New York City was in 2003, when a court gave $18,278,000 to a man who was paralysed when a ferry crashed at Staten Island dock.

To put her demand in perspective, the United States’ national debt ceiling is $15 trillion – 60 times less than the payout the plaintiff here is seeking – while Ireland’s national debt at the end of January was €119.4 billion (around $157.5 billion).

The combined wealth of Forbes’ twenty richest people in the world, meanwhile, is around $640 billion – a sum 1400 times smaller than the amount being sought by Ogunbayo.