Comment 2 for bug 137132

Unfortunately yes, below is the exact description of the error, on an updated latest 8.10 beta:

Removing netapplet ...
 * Stopping network interface daemon...
invoke-rc.d: initscript netapplet, action "stop" failed.
dpkg: error processing netapplet (--purge):
 subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
 * Starting network interface daemon...
   ...done.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 netapplet
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:

As you can see, the script that tries to stop the daemon fails, because the daemon is already stopped.
Maybe this should give an warning instead of error allowing the removal script to continue.