Correction appended below

Allen Pace was a veteran paratrooper with tours in Afghanistan and Bosnia under his belt when bad knees prompted him to leave the military and start his own trucking company.

Pace had been in business only a few months when a tractor-trailer rig driven by a man named Billy Ray Outlaw—who had spent the previous night popping pills and partying, Pace's lawyers said—slammed into Pace's rig on I-20 in 2010. The accident wrecked Pace's truck, his livelihood and his physical health, said Pace's lead counsel, Atlanta attorney Terry Jackson.

Last month, a federal jury awarded Pace $3.8 million in compensatory damages from the Alabama trucking company for which Outlaw worked and from its insurance company.