Comment 1 for bug 459245

Technically these are defects/annoyances in the apache library. Especially for error, since it is the result of calling getMessage() on a Throwable. This may, according to the Java API docs return "null", thus "null" is the legitimate error here.

If anything a translation layer makes sense, such that "nulls" are converted to a string like "Unspecified" or "Not Available"