Recoverable fatal error: Argument 2 passed to field_collection_item_access() must be an instance of FieldCollectionItemEntity

I have yet to reproduce the steps that created a node in the state that generates this error, but of course the client managed to do it. The error is...

Recoverable fatal error: Argument 2 passed to field_collection_item_access() must be an instance of FieldCollectionItemEntity, boolean given, called in field_collection_table.module on line 95 and defined infield_collection_item_access() (line 488 of field_collection.module).
<code>

I added a !empty($field_collection) to that line to resolve this...

<code>
if ($settings[$op] && !empty($field_collection) && field_collection_item_access($op == 'edit' ? 'update' : $op, $field_collection)) {

Will post more detail when I can reproduce the steps.