Ladders behaving like Falling Sand

I was working in a desert biome on an npc village on a multiplayer server that is not hosted locally. While starting to place ladders where there was several consecutive blocks, and then none beneath them, it placed the first normally, then as more were added to the bottom until it reached the 'underhang' part, they all fell in a vertical column similar to sand/gravel/etc. Surprisingly, in several instances this resulted in one or two ladders being re-placed after the fall, with no blocks behind them. When one of these, or any ladders directly above such are broken, or their supporting blocks are broken it leads to a client-side crash. I have the error report(s) attached.