In bridge, should East consider "overtaking" his partner's lead if able?
No; overtaking partners honour should not be on East's list of possible actions as dummy comes down.

That is not to say that it is never right for East to do so; or that East should never take such an action. 

Rather, there are far too many more important things for East to be studying as Dummy comes down than a check-list of rare and unusual plays. Any such bold action can only be performed confidently through an extremely good picture of the hand, and how the defensive setting trick is to be developed. Such an understanding of the hand will only be hindered, significantly, by spending (need I say wasting) valuable seconds considering a list of circumstances that only occur every one or two hundred hands. 

If the action is correct, and one obtains through more efficient means a sufficient picture of the hand to predict this as required to establish the setting trick, it will then become an obvious action.