Dan Price, the chief executive of a small Seattle company who promised last year to pay every one of his workers at least $70,000 a year, has won a court battle with his brother.

On Friday, Judge Theresa B. Doyle of Superior Court in King County, in Washington State, ruled that Dan’s brother, Lucas, had failed to prove his claims that Dan had overpaid himself and inappropriately used a corporate credit card for personal expenses. The judge also ordered Lucas to pay Dan’s legal fees.

Mr. Price had come to symbolize one executive’s stand against the widening gap between workers’ pay and executive compensation. “The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” Mr. Price said then. He described himself as a man with simple tastes and whose extravagances ran to snowboarding and picking up the occasional bar bill.