broke package

[John Dangler]

After upgrading from breezy to dapper on our production server,
everything seems to be running except spamassassin.
However, on trying to remove it, I get this - 

root at mgjventures:/# apt-get --purge spamassassin
E: Invalid operation spamassassin

if I try and fix the package, I get this -

root at mgjventures:/# dpkg --configure -a
Setting up spamassassin (3.1.3-1ubuntu1~dapper1) ...
Starting SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon: process already running.
invoke-rc.d: initscript spamassassin, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing spamassassin (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 spamassassin

Any ideas as to how to fix this ???  Any input is greatly appreciated.