Disney claimed that when it acquired #Lucasfilm, it only acquired its *assets*, but not its *liabilities*. That meant that while it continued to hold Foster's license to publish his novel, they were not bound by an obligation to *pay* Foster for this license, since that liability was retained by the (now defunct) original company:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/30/disney-still-must-pay/#pay-the-writer
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For Disney, this wage-theft (and many others like it, affecting writers with less fame and clout than Foster) was greatly assisted by the chaos of scale. The chimera of Lucas/Disney had no definitive responsible party who could be dragged into a discussion. The endless corporate shuffling that is normal in giant companies meant that anyone who might credibly called to account for the theft could be transfered or laid off overnight, with no obvious successor.
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The actual paperwork itself was hard for anyone to lay hands on, since the relevant records had been physically transported and re-stored subsequent to the merger. And, of course, the company itself was so big and powerful that it was hard for Foster and his agent to raise a credible threat.
I've experienced versions of this myself: every book contract I've ever signed stipulated that my ebooks could not be published with DRM.
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