UPDATE: Bethesda's Pete Hines offered us the official response to this issue:
"We have verified there is a problem that can happen on the PC and we are still looking into whether it is possible on 360, since we don't have any reported cases on that platform so far and haven't been able to replicate it ourselves on that platform. We're testing a fix for it right now and hope to have it out as soon as possible. When we have more info, we'll let folks know."