This post exemplifies why you don't take legal advice from strangers on the internet.
You don't need to dig up a civil court case to know that verbally accepting a contract without intending to fulfill it is naive and potentially dangerous.
It looks like (from basic research) that verbal acceptance IS legally binding (in the US anyway).
The trouble with verbal agreements is they can be problematic to enforce.
Don't confuse what the laws says can happen with what will happen.
Look people don't need much of a leg to stand on if they want to sue if the pot of gold is big enough. But at least, in my experience, people are usually hard pressed to sue over verbal contracts or for that matter obviously even many written and executed contracts.
Keep in mind that the advice that many lawyers will give you is going to generally steer away from telling you to take chances lest you then go and pin the blame on him when you are the edge case.