the unenforceable nature of gentlemen's agreements is the essence of what makes it not a contract. Otherwise it's just a contract. And oft-times those gentlemen's agreements are illegal, such as steel price fixing and agreements between grocers not to compete in Texas (HEB had an agreement with, iirc, the weingartens not to move into Houston, and still has one with, iirc, brookshire bros in dallas).
What one may interpret as a gentleman's agreement can become a verbal agreement if the courts become involved - though I must agree that my former equating of that with the email chain normally inherent with a review embargo is improper.
You start this paragraph off with a correct statement of the law but then end with this weird stuff about "almost." A contract is a contract. Breaching an an oral contract is not "considered almost like a standard breach", it is a breach. It may have proof problems but that doesn't make it kinda like a breach, because it is a breach.
I say "almost" because there are still a myriad of complications not present in normal breach of contract cases. The statute of fraud comes to mind in addition to aforementioned proving. Then there are all the many details that need to be worked out - basically a contract after-the-fact must be created from which breach is then argued.
This is very wrong. Most courts nowadays recognize that business is done by email and formal signatures have often gone the way if the dodo. Now, you may have a "Battle of the forms" situation, but I very much doubt there is any chance of a review site sending its own competing embargo proposal.
My statement was quite unclear as to what I meant. I was meaning to explain how the only things that typically change with an email change are the provability of terms. Sometimes the email chain may have a thorough agreement regarding remedies, venues, and so forth - I've dealt with that before for contract work - but usually the agreement is little more than
A: "You want do do this?"
B: "Sure, I'll be there by 1700, $500 sound good?"
A: "Sure, see you at 1700."
Then A challenges B on the $500 amount after the work is done and B asserts that A's statement constituted an agreement.
I draft and litigate contracts for a living.
That would explain the insistence on precision
It would be like you telling me how the software I wrote works internally ;-)