Depends what your code looks like now.
In the OP, the snippet posted would throw an nullpointer exception on setting the condition, because of the appended '.execute()'. calling execute on an event always throws NPE, because it is for the EventExecutor's internal use (and the executor sets some vars on the event before calling it).
Removing that, there's no way the snippet in the OP can throw an NPE, unless the area is null.