Please have a try and you will never see the error

$rows = array();
/*while($row = db_fetch_object($result)) {
	$rows[] = $row;
}*/
foreach ($result as $row) {
       $rows[] = $row;
return $rows;

Please also try to change those:

$result = db_query("select * from {files} where fid = %d", $val['_fid']);
while ($data = db_fetch_object($result)) {
      $thefile = $data;
}

to

$query = db_select('files', 'f')
  ->fields('f')
  ->condition('fid', $val['_fid']);
$thefile = $query->execute()->fetchObject();

?