If that's the actual error message, it doesn't look like a Perl error message to me. Perhaps the code isn't getting anywhere near the perl interpreter in the first place?
Check your server configuration...
If that's the real error message, then my error identification tools say that it is either an SQL or C error. So I'm betting it is a paraphrase of the error message (removing the line number and filename information).
But I don't really have anything useful to offer beyond the many other replies. I just found the idea of CGI Perl code getting fed to a database or C compiler amusing. :)