My question involves independent contractors in the state of: CO
5 months ago I was approached by the owner of a business that my family frequents asking if I would be interested in booking fundraiser events for their establishment. At the time, it sounded like a wonderful opportunity and quite a challenge and I agreed. I proceeded to spend the next 2 months working from home countless hours creating a list of people to book events with for this venue. There was no written agreement and the business owner agreed on a commission scale verbally which I later confirmed in an email. As the success of these events took off, I decided to pursue other venues and am still developing proposals for additional businesses.
At the start of 2015, I presented a client services agreement to the business owner who originally asked me to take on this endeavor. It describes our business relationship specifically designating me as an independent contractor. In it, the customer list that I developed in order to get started booking these events is listed as my proprietary information and states the business owner has no ownership of it. The business owner told me they want to continue doing business but without a contract and they believe they have ownership of the customer list I developed. They had also never had me fill out a W-9 for them, but I handed them one at this meeting.
My question is, why would a business owner want to continue doing business without a contract that clearly states our business relationship? And based on the information I provided, is there anything that would suggest they have ownership of my customer list? I started booking all these events from scratch with no assistance, materials, promotional aids from the business owner. I work on my own with no direction from them. They advise the available dates and times on their calendar and then I book events during those times. I let them know what I have confirmed and get paid based on attendance only. I currently have one other venue and they had no issues signing the same agreement.
Thanks for you time.

