Comment 1 for bug 312259

Before running screen with sudo (so after a fresh reboot, when the error occurs), can you please post the output of
   ls -l /var | grep run
and
   ls -l /usr/bin/screen

The first command should show the permissions of the folder /var/run as 755 (drwxr-xr-x) and owned by root:root
The last command should show screen to have permissions 755 with sgid (rwxr-sr-x) and owned by root:utmp

If the last command doesn't show something very similar to
   -rwxr-sr-x 1 root utmp 308228 2007-10-23 12:02 /usr/bin/screen
Then run
   sudo chown root:utmp /usr/bin/screen
   sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/screen
   sudo chmod g+s /usr/bin/screen

Since this bug didn't have a package associated with it, I am filing it under "screen", though I expect this is a configuration problem and not a bug. Thanks in advance for the information requested. Let me know if the problem is solved.