diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 3da24853a01..e264ecff87f 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -112,6 +112,7 @@ Release 0.19.0 - Unreleased
    HBASE-1067  TestRegionRebalancing broken by running of hdfs shutdown thread
    HBASE-1070  Up default index interval in TRUNK and branch
    HBASE-1045  Hangup by regionserver causes write to fail
+   HBASE-1079  Dumb NPE in ServerCallable hides the RetriesExhausted exception
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-901   Add a limit to key length, check key and value length on client side
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/client/ServerCallable.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/client/ServerCallable.java
index ab5fe6b4cb4..0172ff716d6 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/client/ServerCallable.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/client/ServerCallable.java
@@ -68,6 +68,9 @@ public abstract class ServerCallable<T> implements Callable<T> {
   
   /** @return the region name */
   public byte[] getRegionName() {
+    if (location == null) {
+      return null;
+    }
     return location.getRegionInfo().getRegionName();
   }