Sometimes, when a player logs onto a server, the scoreboard is not properly sent. This can result in a client-side NullPointerException when the Scoreboard display slot is set for an objective already in that exact same slot. Here is an example stacktrace:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at arj.k(SourceFile:133)
at bdl.a(SourceFile:1086)
at fc.a(SourceFile:43)
at ci.b(SourceFile:350)
at bdl.d(SourceFile:95)