I tested the fix further and discovered that the results from a search are as quoted below. So, I pass "true" instead of "false" for the last parameter and predictably the apostrophes now appear as entities, but the search works.

Error Code: 4096
Error Message: Object of class DOMDocument could not be converted to string
File: /home1t/florevid/www/includes/helpers/ajax_search.php
Line: 58

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /home1t/florevid/www/includes/helpers/ajax_search.php:47) in /home1t/florevid/www/includes/classes/session.php on line 13

Fatal error: Call to a member function GetVariable() on a non-object in /home1t/florevid/www/includes/classes/lang.php on line 26