does a third party witnessed verbal agreement count for anything?

[randscott]

I'm in Ca and I was working for a person who had his own corporate recruiting firm. The origional deal was that I could either make 10% of what the entire buisiness makes or 20% of what I did so I chose the 20%. After working for 4 or 5 months he and my girlfriends mom broke up which forced me to move away (long story) there was another agreement witnessed by third party (girlfriend and her mother) that if anything I had been working on happened he would pay me. He since changed all the password so I can't get into the system and I have found that at least one of my candidates had been hired. A fee that should have been about 6,000$ he won't pay me now and says I'm screwed cuz I didn't get anything in writing. Is that right?