Comment 3 for bug 1532507

Unfortunate that there is no solution provided by Ubuntu months after the fact. I had the same problem and looked up how to work around it (not sure if it's the best solution). Described in https://askubuntu.com/questions/384511/files-list-for-package-patch-is-not-a-regular-file :

    Go into the /var/lib/dpkg directory
    Make a backup of the "status" file
    Open the status file as root and find the package that causes the error.
    Delete all the text until the next PACKAGE: declaration in the file.