Thanks, but this is a dynamic check when the class is called to ensure the connection passed to it is valid. I ended up writing the whole revision using mySQLi natively. It was easier than expected. I thought I had a great deal more rewrite to do.
if($this->conn->connect_errno > 0){
die('UNABLE TO SELECT DATABASE myClass Error<br />[' . $this->conn->connect_error . ']');
}