Indeed they could. Mine were making noise on my 300E, when I took it all apart I found: missing hardware (lower spring was never even installed) and one of the small retaining springs for one of the shoes had broken, and thus the shoes were flopping all over in there. No wonder the parking brakes didn't work!

After replacing everything they work perfectly.

I'd pull the rotor and have a look at the situation.

__________________
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