Files list file for one particular package repeatedly breaks

Using Zorin OS Lite. I keep getting this error when installing packages.

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:  files list file for package 'mutter-common' contains empty filename
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

This seems to be the same error mentioned in this posting. https://askubuntu.com/questions/648736/i-get-this-error-dpkg-unrecoverable-fatal-error-aborting-files-list-file-for# With me, it was several different packages. I went through all of them and fixed them by the method described in Adrian Cid Almaguer's answer to that other question. However,

-common

seems to keep breaking again. Repeating the same manoeuvre fixes it, but it's odd. None of the others seem to have broken again. Any idea what's going on here and whether there's any way to get rid of it?