Misreading of review by editor I submitted a paper to a journal in pure mathematics and got a rejection mail 5 month afterwards, which essentially said that having two referee reports available they couldn't publish it. So I read the reports and one said strongly recommend, whereas the other started with a very very harsh paragraph (everyone I asked said they wouldn't ever believe that a report that starts like that could end in any other result than rejection) but eventually also suggested not to reject the paper but doing a major revision (which essentially consisted of reducing the material presented and thereby changing its structure -- so very likely that the author is able to do a successful revision).
So my question is: Could you imagine that the editor might not have read the full report but stopped after the first paragraph? I have to admit that I couldn't blame him/her for that.
I asked the journal for clarification and after some back and forth they told me that I was rejected due to a long backlog but that I could do a revision and resubmit (if there is a reason why this would help with a full backlog that I don't see, please enlighten me also in this point). However, I could also imagine that they just gave me this explanation to stick with their decision, which would also be understandable to me.
A major revision is similar to a resubmit. So, the editor has made a reasonable decision.
To answer your question: Yes, but my imagination only requires the possible existence of such an editor, so that answer isn't interesting.