I tracked the problem down to the function nfs4_do_open_expired.
Within this function _nfs4_open_expired is called and may return
-NFS4ERR_DELAY. When a further call to _nfs4_open_expired is
executed and does not return -NFS4ERR_DELAY the "exception.retry"
variable is not reset to 0, causing the loop to iterate again
(and as long as err != -NFS4ERR_DELAY, probably forever)