Tar: Cannot open: File exists

Problem

When extracting a tar file, tar exits with the error message:

tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Moving up through the list of files, I see this error:

tar: CHANGELOG.php: Cannot open: File exists

$> tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.16

The directory in which CHANGELOG.php is extracted, doesn't have write permissions for non-root user `me':

$> ls -ld .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 2007-09-21 21:33 .

Allowing writes fixes tar:

$> sudo chmod o+w .