Usually it depends on how the cable is 1) manufactured and 2) handled if its a manufacturing flaw then it could have been kinked in the sheathing upon purchase and any small movement would have caused a problem. If it was mishandled (streched, bent, twisted excessively) it can always cause problems even with the best quality line. Normally before using any ethernet line I'll test its continuity.
As far as a packet storm I could easily see that occuring if it was going from non the network to not on the network it could be generating alot of data to try and make up for the bad connection.