QueryGrammar is null in Laravel5.1/Jessenger 3.0 and MongoDB 3.4

I have a Laravel 5.1 application running on Ubuntu 16.04 and PHP 5.6

This was previously using mongo.so (the older MongoDB PHP driver) and I have migrated it to the new driver mongodb.so - this was required since I upgraded MongoDB to 3.4 and would like to connect to a MongoDB Replica Set

I was using Jennseger's library to connect, which I also upgraded - and updated the to the laravelcollective/html library as well

The current composer.json file looks like this:

..
"php": ">=5.5.9",
"laravel/framework": "5.1.*",
"laravelcollective/html": "5.1.*",
"jenssegers/mongodb": "3.0.*",
..

When I login to the application, it generates the following error:

in Builder.php line 214
at HandleExceptions->handleError('4096', 'Argument 2 passed to Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder::__construct() 
must be an instance of Illuminate\Database\Query\Grammars\Grammar, null given, called in 
<app_root>/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php on line 1873 and defined', 
'<app_root>/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Builder.php', '214', array('connection' => object(Connection))) in Builder.php line 214

I have followed the guidelines to a similar error and replaced my Eloquent models

e.g. the following:

use Jenssegers\Mongodb\Model;

class Alert extends Model
{
.. 
..
}

is replaced by:

use Jenssegers\Mongodb\Eloquent\Model as Eloquent;

class Alert extends Eloquent {
..
..
}

and the User model is now:

use App\Scopes\Traits\ReportingTrait;
 use Illuminate\Auth\Authenticatable;
 use Illuminate\Auth\Passwords\CanResetPassword;
 use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Authenticatable as AuthenticatableContract;
 use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\CanResetPassword as CanResetPasswordContract;
 use Bican\Roles\Traits\HasRoleAndPermission;
 use Bican\Roles\Contracts\HasRoleAndPermission as HasRoleAndPermissionContract;

use Jenssegers\Mongodb\Eloquent\Model as Eloquent;

class User extends Eloquent implements AuthenticatableContract, CanResetPasswordContract, HasRoleAndPermissionContract
 {
     use Authenticatable, CanResetPassword, HasRoleAndPermission, ReportingTrait;
..
..
}

There is a readme from a previous version for the jennsegers library here

I seem to have the requirements checked - including:

> php -i | grep 'Mongo'
MongoDB support => enabled
MongoDB extension version => 1.2.9
MongoDB extension stability => stable

via Chebli Mohamed