A very weird Laravel issue

I am getting this very weird issue in Laravel.

return $this->pending($input);

When I do this, I get the data that I need.

{
  "total": 51,
  "per_page": 5,
  "current_page": 1,
  "last_page": 11,
  "next_page_url": "http://ift.tt/20g0hjT",
  "prev_page_url": null,
  "from": 1,
  "to": 5,
  "data": [
     //some data
   ]
}

However, when I tried doing this:

$response['pending'] = $this->pending($input);

I get a blank array.

{
  "pending": {}
}

Any idea why is this happening? I am sure the query is correct, because I am getting the expected result from the query.

via Chebli Mohamed