It's a deliberate strategy, one I saw referenced a day or so ago elsewhere.

Lawyers (or other parties engaged in litigation) will "overwhelm with kindness" in response to discovery requests by producing tremendous amounts of irrelevant material, often in cumbersome formats, in order to overwhelm opponents.

Or as I've commented in another thread earlier today: attention and time are the ultimate nonfungible resources, and distracting or delaying an apponent is a long-recognised basic tactic.

I've heard of it, too. The example I have in mind was getting an overly-broad subpoena that could be construed to include every sales receipt issued by the business over the last decade. These were delivered, unsorted and mixed in with other documents in a gigantic box, with "for attorney's eyes only" written on them, and bundled together with high-tension straps that would scatter the pages about the office when opened.

The parties settled and the documents were never touched.

I think that's a separate thing from what I was talking about, though you can certainly do both at the same time.