php7/pear showing parse error when requiring files - php

Question

I have a legacy site (not written by me) that has been on a server with php5 on it for the last several years. I am in the process of creating a new server with php7 on it and testing what works and is broken.
the site uses pear by including the file pear/lib/DB.php. i created a brand new page that only has the code
<?php
require_once( "DB.php" );
?>
this presents the exact same error as the full site.
the error that's being presented is
PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'new' (T_NEW) in /local/sites/php/pear/lib/DB.php on line 310
the site only requires DB.php because I have added Pear to the php.ini in include_path
checking the version of Pear gives me the following
$ pear version
PEAR Version: 1.10.3
PHP Version: 7.0.15-0ubuntu0.16.04.4
Zend Engine Version: 3.0.0
Running on: Linux cdc-migration-0d 3.13.0-103-generic #150-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 24 10:34:17 UTC 2016 x86_64
from my research it shows the latest version of Pear is php7 compatible, so these should work together. any idea why just requiring the DB.php on a test page would immediately generate the parsing error?
edit:
the code in the pear file that is generating the error is as follows
function &factory($type, $options = false)
{
if (!is_array($options)) {
$options = array('persistent' => $options);
}
if (isset($options['debug']) && $options['debug'] >= 2) {
// expose php errors with sufficient debug level
include_once "DB/{$type}.php";
} else {
#include_once "DB/{$type}.php";
}
$classname = "DB_${type}";
if (!class_exists($classname)) {
$tmp = PEAR::raiseError(null, DB_ERROR_NOT_FOUND, null, null,
"Unable to include the DB/{$type}.php file",
'DB_Error', true);
return $tmp;
}
#$obj =& new $classname; // ##### this is line 310 that generates the error #####
foreach ($options as $option => $value) {
$test = $obj->setOption($option, $value);
if (DB::isError($test)) {
return $test;
}
}
return $obj;
}

Answer 1

#$obj =& new $classname;
Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated since PHP 5.3. http://php.net/manual/en/migration53.deprecated.php
This is PHP4 style of writing PHP.
Write instead :
$obj = new $classname;
This has been removed as of PHP7.
See: http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.incompatible.php#migration70.incompatible.other.new-by-ref