Badly formed CSV file crashes CiviCRM import

For some reason MS Excel 2003 sometimes creates a CSV file with multiple blank fields on the first several lines of the saved as CSV file. Importing a file like this causes CiviCRM import to yield the following error:

Fatal error: A in /usr/shared/lampp-httpdocs/apap/drupal5.1/sites/all/modules/civicrm/packages/HTML/QuickForm/hierselect.php(232) : eval()'d code on line 1

The badly formed CSV file from excel will have about the header row and about the first ten rows with the extra empty columns. The rest of the file does not have all the empty columns. Here is an example of what this looks like in the header row of the CSV file.

Last Name,First Name,Email,Address,City,State,Zip,Phone,Organization,Title,HPH,TRAIN,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,