MissingInvocation of Expected static method with mocked instance parameter

I am using JMockIt 1.8, and I have the following classes:

public class SimpleUser {
    public static void useSimple(final SimpleClass simple) {
        System.out.println("useSimple called");
    }

    public void createAndUse() {
        final SimpleClass simple = new SimpleClass();
        simple.method();
        SimpleUser.useSimple(simple);
    }
}

and

public class SimpleClass {
    public void method() {
    }
}

With the following test class:

public class Tester {
    @Mocked SimpleClass simple;

    @Test
    public void test() {
        new Expectations(SimpleUser.class) {
            {
                new SimpleClass();

                simple.method();

                SimpleUser.useVisitor(simple);
            }
        };

        SimpleUser user = new SimpleUser();
        user.createAndUse();
    }
}

And this test passes.

However, when I remove the call to simple.method() in SimpleUser and the expectation for simple.method() in Tester, the test errors with:

mockit.internal.MissingInvocation: Missing invocation of
  SimpleUser#useVisitor(SimpleClass simple)
    with arguments: SimpleClass@45490852

---

Why does the behavior change depending on whether method() is called and how can I ensure that SimpleUser.useSimple() is called with the SimpleClass created in createAndUse(), without resorting to calling a method within SimpleClass .