ST. LOUIS • A St. Louis gas station accused of cutting prices so far below cost that it ran a competitor out of business could now be forced to pay $5.6 million to that man via a rarely used Missouri law, the man’s attorney said Monday.

A price war between two other stations cost Christopher Westmoreland the gas station that has been in his family since 1968, his attorney Jeremy Gogel said Monday. The bank took the station, then sold it, but that still left about $500,000 unpaid on his business loan, Gogel said.

The station was the retirement plan for Westmoreland, who is in his mid-50s, Gogel said. He’s now driving a truck from Oklahoma to Chicago and back four days a week to try to pay off the lien against his home in Ballwin, Gogel said.

“He’s just trying to get by,” he said.

Gogel said that might now be easier after a recent jury verdict in his favor.

A St. Louis jury awarded Westmoreland $1.8 million in October after he and his attorneys said that Midwest-St. Louis LLC had violated the law by pricing gas below cost.