It depends, I think, on how you view “agreements” of that sort.
One view is that such an agreement is a contract, and in this case the contract apparently did not contain a clause covering opting out. Absent such a clause, unilateral withdrawal does give the others ground for their “breach of faith” argument.
A different view is that what was agreed on was a plan, not a contract. That’s a substantially different frame: a plan is a collective course of action in the pursuit of a goal. “Breach of faith” has no place in goal-seeking behaviour; someone objecting to the plan either has a sound case or doesn’t.
Breach of faith or not, Whetmore’s actions strike me as not entirely well-thought-out. He would have been in a better position had he declared: “Wait, we haven’t covered all bases yet; how should we handle the case when one of us is tempted to opt out?” Presenting the case as hypothetical and preserving the symmetry of the situation would have been tactically much better, under both the plan and the contract views. Under the plan view he could have ensured a dispassionate hearing for his proposed alternate course of action; under the contract view he could have pushed for fixing an oversight in the original formulation.
It depends, I think, on how you view “agreements” of that sort.
One view is that such an agreement is a contract, and in this case the contract apparently did not contain a clause covering opting out. Absent such a clause, unilateral withdrawal does give the others ground for their “breach of faith” argument.
A different view is that what was agreed on was a plan, not a contract. That’s a substantially different frame: a plan is a collective course of action in the pursuit of a goal. “Breach of faith” has no place in goal-seeking behaviour; someone objecting to the plan either has a sound case or doesn’t.
Breach of faith or not, Whetmore’s actions strike me as not entirely well-thought-out. He would have been in a better position had he declared: “Wait, we haven’t covered all bases yet; how should we handle the case when one of us is tempted to opt out?” Presenting the case as hypothetical and preserving the symmetry of the situation would have been tactically much better, under both the plan and the contract views. Under the plan view he could have ensured a dispassionate hearing for his proposed alternate course of action; under the contract view he could have pushed for fixing an oversight in the original formulation.
(N.B. I haven’t RTFA, just the summary.)