broken Monad Either instance?

[Christian Maeder]

Hi,

I was surprised to see my code break with ghc-7, due to changed monad 
instances:

With ghc-6.12.3 I have:

Prelude> :m Control.Monad.Error
Prelude Control.Monad.Error>  fail "Bla" :: Either String ()
Loading package mtl-1.1.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Left "Bla"

but with ghc-7.0.4 and ghc-7.2.2 I get a fatal exception:

*Main> fail "Bla" :: Either String ()
*** Exception: Bla

I always viewed "Either String" as an alternative to Maybe with a 
failure message.

The instance in ghc-7 comes from Control.Monad.Instances:
   instance Monad (Either e) where
         return = Right
         Left  l >>= _ = Left l
         Right r >>= k = k r

which indeed uses "error" as default implementation of fail. Is there 
(supposed to be) an overlapping "instance Monad (Either String)" 
somewhere else?

Any comments (or notes) that I missed?

Cheers Christian