simonsimcity at gmail dot com is wrong, you can throw exceptions in this but it will wrap with another exception so his example outputs

 PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught exception 'RuntimeException' with message 'It failed!' in -:8
 Stack trace:
 #0 [internal function]: Foo->jsonSerialize()
 #1 -(16): json_encode(Object(Foo))
 #2 {main}

 Next exception 'Exception' with message 'Failed calling Foo::jsonSerialize()' in -:16
 Stack trace:
 #0 -(0): json_encode()
 #1 {main}
   thrown in - on line 16

PHP 5.4.39