That particular message usually comes from using a sub designed to be used as an object method as a class method instead.

Quick demo:

use v5.10;
use strict;
use warnings;

{
    package Local::Class;
    sub new {
        my $class = shift;
        my %self  = @_;
        bless \%self => $class;
    }
    sub foo {
        my $self = shift;
        return $self->{foo};
    }
}

my $object = Local::Class->new(foo => 42);
say $object->foo;

my $foo = Local::Class->foo;
[download]

So that's what that error message means. It's not especially Perl version dependent though, so I can't imagine upgrading to a newer version of Perl will fix this particular bug.

Though in general I'd always recommend running the latest stable version of Perl possible; currently 5.16.2.