Winning, it's a personal decision you're asking, and you know it.

What am I going to do? I'm working it out now. Someone needs to be

The problem is that this 1099 worker dropped out of the industry entirely, and then for a long time he was waiting to POUNCE on me when I closed a deal. He had this other broker egging him on as well. The issue is that if I have to pay him, or have to keep paying him, then there's another broker in the chain, and that's waaaay too many hands in the pockets, especially when this other broker often has to pay his group as well.

On the one hand, it's not fair to treat me as a dishrag. On the other hand, he will probably complain about this experience for years. I've lost binding arbitration before as well and it hurts.

I'm trying to balance, like you said, my own financial stability, how much I made on the deal and how much I gave up to others already (it was already split 50-50), the "I deserve it" attitude that I don't want to feed.

Additionally, it has to be enough money for both the other broker involved and the one who sued me, feel like I gave them more than they deserved. So I have to negotiate both with the other broker and my ex-1099 guy to try to make them BOTH happy, so the introducing guy will continue to send me business! I think I did come up with a solution that nobody loses on and doesn't add to the broker chain in any way, I'm stilling waiting on the other broker to agree so that we can sign on it.