The case, which began as a garden-variety employment lawsuit, has morphed into a First Amendment battle.

A legal dispute over the firing of a hospital employee has escalated into a battle pitting one of the largest employers in St. Joseph, Missouri, against the city’s daily newspaper.

Heartland Regional Medical Center — which operates as Mosaic Life Care — earlier this month deposed both the reporter who covered the dispute for the St. Joseph News-Press, Clayton Anderson, and the newspaper’s director of news and content, Steven Booher.

The hospital has since upped the ante and requested sanctions against attorneys representing the fired hospital employee, Reba Lasseur. Mosaic argues that Lasseur's attorneys disclosed information to the newspaper that was subject to a court-issued protective order.

“I believe they were trying to intimidate the St. Joseph News-Press from printing any more stories about this sanctions order and covering it,” said Sonal Bhatia, one of Lasseur’s attorneys, in a phone interview this week.

In April, Mosaic itself was sanctioned by the judge in the case after the judge found the hospital had produced a misleading spreadsheet showing only two out of 526 sick or injured employees had been terminated or otherwise let go for reporting sick.

After that, Bhatia’s law firm paid for a billboard on a major St. Joseph thoroughfare asking Mosaic employees who had been fired to call the firm. It emerged that, in fact, at least 163 Mosaic employees had been...

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