Ability to create new LocalLBPool without any members through iControl Java API

I've been using the iControl Java (assembly) API to manage/configure the BigIP LTM instance (the virtual edition trial version). The management console of BigIP allows creating a LTM pool without any (initial) members added and just passing a load balancing method and a pool name. However, trying to do the same via the iControl Java API as follows results in an exception which isn't informative on why it's failing:

final LocalLBPoolBindingStub localLBPool = (LocalLBPoolBindingStub) new LocalLBPoolLocator().getLocalLBPoolPort(this.bigIpLoadBalancerURL);
localLBPool.create(new String[]{poolName}, new LocalLBLBMethod[]{loadBalancingMethod}, new CommonIPPortDefinition[0][0]);

Notice that I am passing an empty array as the 3rd param to the create method. It fails with:

Caused by: (500)Internal Server Error
    at org.apache.axis.transport.http.HTTPSender.readFromSocket(HTTPSender.java:744)
    at org.apache.axis.transport.http.HTTPSender.invoke(HTTPSender.java:144)
    at org.apache.axis.strategies.InvocationStrategy.visit(InvocationStrategy.java:32)
    at org.apache.axis.SimpleChain.doVisiting(SimpleChain.java:118)
    at org.apache.axis.SimpleChain.invoke(SimpleChain.java:83)
    at org.apache.axis.client.AxisClient.invoke(AxisClient.java:165)
    at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invokeEngine(Call.java:2784)
    at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2767)
    at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2443)
    at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2366)
    at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:1812)
    at iControl.LocalLBPoolBindingStub.create(LocalLBPoolBindingStub.java:2429)

and no more information.

1) Should it be possible to use iControl API to create a new pool without any (initial) members? From a BigIP point of view, I think it's possible since the UI allows you to do that.

2) Is there a way I can figure out what exactly the problem is with that method call? The error message isn't too informative.

Environment information:

iControl Java (assembly) API version: 11.4.1 (the latest that was available here https://devcentral.f5.com/d/icontrol-library-for-java)

BigIP version: 10.1 Virtual edition trial version available from here https://www.f5.com/trial/big-ip-ltm-virtual-edition.php