Holding my breath reading this because I have literally seen the same thing happen at our branch last year. We had a tiny Pride display up for maybe three days and one complaint about a picture book with two dads on the cover got it dumped into storage faster than I could blink. No meeting, no review, no chance to defend it, just a quiet email saying we needed to "reevaluate" the selection. It honestly made me wonder how many other displays get killed that we never even hear about. Did your director give you any reason for skipping the review process, or was it just pure panic?

$18k is actually pretty cheap for a custom CRM, so let me flip this around for a second. You got two solid sprints of work before they vanished, which means you probably have a working foundation, even if it's not finished. Instead of burning time and money on a legal fight the arbitration clause already killed, you could take what you have, hire a freelancer to finish the tough parts, and be live in 60 days. The dev shop taking a bigger client is their right, they made a business call, and if you had done the same research, you'd have seen red flags in their client list or their contract terms before signing. Honestly, eating the $18k as a lesson learned is way cheaper than the six months of stress you'll get chasing a refund that's never coming.