If you are just trying to clean the list after it has been Imported to Mathematica and you wish to use StringReplace the just escape the raw double quote

StringReplace["bad\" stuff \"from \"\"copy paste", "\"" -> ""]

Does this help/

Try using the Import function with the following additional option:

Import[file,  "TextDelimiters" -> {}]

let me know if this works for you.

Take a look at the discussion of "TextDelimiters" in this documentaiton:

http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/format/CSV.html

Hi David and Hans,

Thanks for the good insights on formatting characters. By playing with different combinations of Import (CSV vs. Table) and the options you suggested, I was able to reduce 139 bad cases to 55. All of this resulted from my collaborator copy and pasting hand-collected data from web pages, especially HTML tables. You know, highlight a little too much and you grab the wrong thing.

I'll keep at it.

Thanks once again,

Gregory