“You can’t fight City Hall,” the age-old adage goes; if you do, the presumed result is that you’ll lose. A member of the Yoruba ethnic group from Sierra Leone who is now a permanent resident of the city, Ayodeji Babalola, proved that the exception is the rule, prevailing after a 12-year battle with City Hall. Now, the Bloomberg administration seems to be mounting an offensive to make sure that her victory will cost her everything.

Fifteen years ago, Ms. Babalola, a journalist who formerly hosted and produced the “Hello Africa” radio program on the city-owned station WNYE 91.5 FM, was wrongfully arrested. She was removed from the air, she believes, as retaliation for her lawsuit against the city, which she litigated herself and won in 2002. I’m not going to go into the details of her case other than to say it would make a great horror movie. She was awarded more than $500,000, which the city is still refusing to pay.

The city has appealed the judgment several times, and each time it has been denied. Yet because of the city’s enormous resources, one can imagine this case could drag on forever. Ms. Babalola recently had to file another Order to Show Cause and the case is awaiting a decision by a judge in the Brooklyn Supreme Court. She wrote me, “Mayor Bloomberg can end it all by directing Corporate Counsel to stop filing frivolous motions and OSC’s and wasting taxpayer money to undo what cannot be undone – that they lost to a non-lawyer in both the civil and in the Appellate Court.”

Wasting taxpayer money may not be as bad as losing face for this arrogant administration, and while Ms. Babalola may think Mr. Bloomberg is a disinterested party and perhaps unaware of what the city’s lawyers are doing, I am not too sure they aren’t working on his directive. She’s not the only one awaiting payment from the city as a result of court cases. My friend’s mother was injured by a city bus more than a year and a half ago and has not received any recompense for her injuries.

Looking over the numerous documents from Ms. Babalola’s case, I was amazed at the level of expertise demonstrated by someone with no actual legal experience. In fact, she planned to attend Brooklyn Law School, but the false arrest derailed her intended career in international law.

According to Ms. Babalola, one of the city attorneys dismissed her as “someone from the bush,” but as a journalist she interviewed Nelson Mandela, Danny Glover, Andrew Young, and numerous other luminaries. More important, she won her case. The trial lasted two weeks and on March 14, 2002, she was awarded $175,000 for the false arrest and $425,000 for malicious prosecution.

I’m not going to go into the details of her subsequent treatment by the city’s attorneys – I’ll leave that up to whoever makes the film (paging Mr. Weinstein). But what I find very interesting is that aside from the president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, and City Council Member John Liu of Queens, her case has received no public reaction from city officials. There has been no response from Freddy Ferrer, Gifford Miller, Betsy Gotbaum, or William Thompson.

Ms. Babalola writes, “Mayor Bloomberg knows what they are doing and remains silent, even though I met him three times on the steps of City Hall, and told him what was going on and gave him the court documents … his silence is mystifying.”

Ms. Babalola contacted me at The New York Sun after she read my column about what is happening to African vendors being run out of the Bronx Market. She said she hoped I could help her situation. I did not get any response from the Bloomberg administration. I contacted the Public Ombudsman’s office and was advised it didn’t handle cases like this and that Ms. Babalola should get a lawyer. What do they handle, I wonder?

Even though I was stunned by the court documents I read, I can’t say I was surprised by the callousness displayed by this administration. Remember the stories of a heavily pregnant woman being issued a summons for resting on a subway stairway; a middle-aged woman sitting in a playground without a child getting a ticket; a video store operator getting ticketed for having an empty ashtray on the counter? Common sense need not apply here any longer.

In the City Journal, Stephen Malenga writes, “there is little within the realm of good government that justifies an administration that will shake down its citizens and its businesses for every last nickel, making ordinary citizens feel like lawbreakers just to balance the books.”

While the city will pounce on the homeowner over a late water bill, it will stiff Ms. Babalola what she is rightfully owed. That is so cheesy. There’s just no other word for this particular City Hall.