Getting initiation error while moving from webdriver to appium driver

hi
i moved from web driver to appium driver
i have the latest selenium -jar,java-client .jar and also g son
i have just made two changes in the code
imported the java client jar and replaced web driver with appium driver
i am getting initiation error the stack trace is as below
please help!!!

java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: io/appium/java_client/AppiumDriver : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredFields(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields(Unknown Source)
at org.junit.runners.model.TestClass.(TestClass.java:49)
at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.(ParentRunner.java:75)
at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:57)
at org.junit.internal.builders.JUnit4Builder.runnerForClass(JUnit4Builder.java:10)
at org.junit.runners.model.RunnerBuilder.safeRunnerForClass(RunnerBuilder.java:59)
at org.junit.internal.builders.AllDefaultPossibilitiesBuilder.runnerForClass(AllDefaultPossibilitiesBuilder.java:26)
at org.junit.runners.model.RunnerBuilder.safeRunnerForClass(RunnerBuilder.java:59)
at org.junit.internal.requests.ClassRequest.getRunner(ClassRequest.java:26)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestReference.(JUnit4TestReference.java:33)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestClassReference.(JUnit4TestClassReference.java:25)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestLoader.createTest(JUnit4TestLoader.java:48)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestLoader.loadTests(JUnit4TestLoader.java:38)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:452)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:683)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:390)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:197)

Looks like a reference mismatch. Are you sure appiumdriver and webdriver are using the same version? maybe your appium driver lib is newer and webdriver is older?

I used the latest jar of selenium while using webdriver and right now using the latest java client jar for appium

I am getting the same error after switching from using WebDriver to AppiumDriver class. All selenium jars are 2.42.2, and using java-client-1.6.2