Network driver setTransactionIsolation() causes a commit, but does not complete it locally

When autocommit is set to false, a call to setTransactionIsolation using client driver does not end the transaction when the method exits. When a close() is called on the conection, it throws an exception.

Running the code below:

conn.setAutoCommit(false);
conn.setTransactionIsolation(Connection.TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED);
try

{ conn.close(); }

catch(SQLException se)

{ System.out.println("Got exception when closing the connection"); se.printStackTrace(); }

with client driver gives:
Got exception when closing the connection
org.apache.derby.client.am.SqlException: java.sql.Connection.close() requested while a transaction is in progress on the connection.The transaction remains active, and the connection cannot be closed.

with embedded driver, it works okay and does not throw any exception.