Yup. I've been on the receiving end of something like this in my small company. We were contracted with a large corp to develop a new control board for one of their products. As we were finishing up, the corporation decided that they wanted out of the market the product was for. So they spun-off that division into its own tiny company and immediately bankrupt it.

That was the first and only time we had to have our lawyer write a client. We got some of our pay from them, but certainly not all.

In hindsight we should have been worried when all of our contacts in that company were jumping ship.