I've seen 2 followers seem to loot one of these, and then stand there and pump its reload action like crazy. To make it stop, I had to open teammate container with the NPC, things like resetai didn't help.

This is a screenshot of the showanim console output and a couple of other checks, while it is happening, if it helps...

http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/screenshots/lever-action-shotgun-prob.jpg