I encountered this bug while using ddx and the cfpdf tag in ColdFusion to generate a table of contents (TOC) for my pdf.

If you are having the same problem, don't panic there is a solution.

Install the ColdFusion 8.01 (or later) update from Adobe.

I found the following in the release notes.

Issue Number 69567

When the cfpdf tag prepares to generate a table of contents, if any font that is required to create the output PDF is unavailable, the assembler processing fails. The error message is cryptic and only says "cause given". To get more information, enable robust debugging in the ColdFusion Administrator. The full stack trace should show the cause.

This could be a separate issue, but it sounds somehow related to the error message I was receiving. Either way, the problem was resolved by version 8.01