diff --git a/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/api/Utils.java b/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/api/Utils.java
index eda059ce5..6c9b2ec5b 100644
--- a/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/api/Utils.java
+++ b/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/api/Utils.java
@@ -43,10 +43,12 @@ public final class Utils
     /** Map of all created regular expressions **/
     private static final Map CREATED_RES = new HashMap();
 
+    ///CLOVER:ON
     /** stop instances being created **/
     private Utils()
     {
     }
+    ///CLOVER:OFF
 
     /**
      * Returns whether the specified string contains only whitespace up to the
@@ -129,21 +131,6 @@ public final class Utils
         return retVal;
     }
 
-    /**
-     * Conditionally add a String to a set of properties.
-     * @param aProps the Properties to add to
-     * @param aKey the key to add the property under
-     * @param aValue if not null, then the value to add the property with
-     */
-    public static void addObjectString(Properties aProps,
-                                       String aKey,
-                                       Object aValue)
-    {
-        if (aValue != null) {
-            aProps.put(aKey, aValue.toString());
-        }
-    }
-
     /**
      * Loads the contents of a file in a String array.
      * @return the lines in the file
diff --git a/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/UtilsTest.java b/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/UtilsTest.java
index 9f76b00ca..f0f249bc5 100644
--- a/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/UtilsTest.java
+++ b/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/UtilsTest.java
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ package com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle;
 import java.util.Properties;
 
 import junit.framework.TestCase;
+import org.apache.commons.beanutils.ConversionException;
 import org.apache.regexp.RE;
 
 import com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.CheckstyleException;
@@ -100,6 +101,17 @@ public class UtilsTest
         }
     }
 
+    public void testBadRegex()
+    {
+        try {
+            Utils.createRE("[");
+            fail("expected to get conversion exception");
+        }
+        catch (ConversionException e) {
+            ; // what is expected
+        }
+    }
+
     private Properties initProperties()
     {
         final Properties props = new Properties();