Comment 6 for bug 138378

A simple printer install is proving a real headache. Had above problem where could not remove printer drivers and broke my ability to apt-get or use Synaptic.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-548840.html
Remove all reference to your drivers, (for me it was `mfc440cncupswrapper',) from /var/lib/dpkg/info.
Then run
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq mfc440cncupswrapper

Now I'm back to square one... *sigh* :(