If you get ever get this error message and you are rolling out your own list definition, chances are you messed something up in the shema.xml file.
The first place to look is the event logs. In my case today this was caused due to an incorrectly mapped column name in the field element. The log files gave the clue:
Unexpected query execution failure, error code 8143. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below. "Parameter '@sql_variant1' was supplied multiple times." Query text (if available): "SET NOCOUNT ON; DECLARE @ItemId int,@@iRet int,@ExtraItemSize int,@DN nvarchar(256),@LN nvarchar(128),@@S uniqueidentifier,@@DocUIVersion int,@@Level tinyint;SET @@S='846FD34D-3722-433D-845B-564ACB4037EE';SET @@Level=1;SET @@DocUIVersion = 512;BEGIN TRAN;SET @ItemId=NULL;SET @DN=N'counterparty/Lists/CounterParties';SET @LN=NULL;SELECT @ExtraItemSize = 0 EXEC @@iRet = proc_AddListItem @SiteId = '846FD34D-3722-433D-845B-564ACB4037EE',@WebId='EEFB7523-73C9-4BDF-B2FC-9AA940A0B059',@ListID = 'B6BA34B0-8CBE-4F1F-819C-0460CF82FA35',@RowOrdinal = 0,@ItemDocType = 0,@ItemId = @ItemId OUTPUT,@ItemDir...
I had used sql_variant1 twice for the ColName attribute, replacing the duplicate with sql_variant2 did the trick 🙂
Edward Wilde 