> shareholders are Disney

Who's shareholders are the public.

> The shareholders aren't going to care

This is not a valid defense in court. You can't let "attitude of investors" override "sound financial decisionmaking."

I'm not defending them or this behaviour but it sounds to me like they may think the message/threat this sends to silence future criticism from other people, outweighs the immediate sum.

(Internally I'm sure they could probably phrase it some other less negative way such as chance of people confusing the brand as still owned by them, etc) association