For the nth time squared, an initscript MUST NOT FAIL to stop an already stopped service.How is it supposed to do that? The service isn't running, so can't be stopped, therefore the script (if called to stop it) can only fail to stop it...
If the service is already stopped, then the script should declare victory and return. Am I missing something? Clearly the purpose of a prerm script is to ensure that the service is not running so that it's safe to remove the software. If the service is already not running, that sounds like it meets the criteria to me.