I haven't worked out the threshold yet but when listing files in directories over a certain size with lsr --long --time I always end up with one file being shown with the incorrect user and group of root with the wrong size and date. Same result omitting --time.
...
-rw-r--r-- moderation moderation 5.1 KB 31 May 2008 icon.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- moderation moderation 646.9 KB 22 Oct 2007 opera.adr
---------- root root 0 B 31 Dec 1969 inf70.pdf
The threshold is 256 files. The listing works fine in a directory with 256 files. Add one more file and you get the behavior above. In directories with more files, the file that get returned without the correct data is the 255th result in the non-sorted directory listing