Corrupted files in ATTIC

[Harig, Mark A.]

Tools:
Linux 2.4 (red hat 7.1)
CVS 1.11.1p1

I have some files in Attic directories that have their 'state' set to
'Exp' for the head revision.  The revision prior to the head revision
has the state set to 'dead'.  For example:

1.5
date    2002.01.14.14.42.52;    author foo;        state Exp;
branches;
next    1.4;

1.4
date    2001.11.19.13.46.18;    author bar; state dead;
branches;
next    1.3;

I'm not sure how this happened (well, several people have write access
to the repository), and I would like to know if there is a way to fix
the problem using cvs commands (of course, I'd rather not delete the
latest revisions using 'cvs admin -o').  Is my only option to simply
edit the ",v" files?  If so, then will changing the state from 'Exp' to
'dead' make the files valid, or is there some side effect I'm not
seeing?

By the way, I'm using CVS 1.11.1p1 now, but during the life of the
repository, we have used 1.11 also.

Thanks for any help!

-mark