Why does getSettings return null on webview?

I have a small percentage of my users that I get a null value for when I call getSettings()

, so I can set some values.

This is what my code looks like in my latest version and I already had one report of fatal exceptions in Crashlytics:

 WebSettings settings = webView.getSettings();
        if (settings == null) {
            sendExceptionThroughCrashlytics(new NullPointerException("Web settings is null"));
        }else{ .....}

      

        
        
        
      

    

And what could be the reason for this? I know this is a negligible percentage of my users, it affects, but I would still prefer to fix the problem. Every device so far is Samsung, all at or below 4.3.

Thank.