CI 2 - Language class and models

I noticed an odd issue and I can't seem to find anything to explain it.

on one of my models i add an error output message to alert that a record is not available, but when it outputs, i get no text, just a blank page.

Now the language tags are valid, the only thing i can figure is that the language file isn't meant to be used on a model, if thats the case I don't see that being explained anywhere.

I hope someone can help me get in the right direction on this, if i have to just set it to false and handle the message on the ui, I'll do that, but prefer not to.

Thanks.

EDIT:

here is what a quick code snipplet that should help:

//fetch topic data.
 $this->db->select('id, Name, Description, Level');
 $this->db->from('groups');
 $this->db->where('id', $gid);
 $query = $this->db->get();
 $GroupData = $query->row();
 
 //see if we have any records to show.
 if($query->num_rows() > 0) {
     $this->setId($GroupData->id);
     $this->setName($GroupData->Name);
     $this->setDescription($GroupData->Description);
     $this->setLevel($GroupData->Level);
 } else {
     //no record was found, throw an error.
     show_error($this->lang->line('invalidgid').'<hr />File:'.__FILE__.'<br />Line:'.__LINE__, 500, $this->lang->line('error'));
     log_message('error', 'invalid GroupID was provided.'); //log error in error log.
 }
 

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