I had the similar the error and got it resolved by doing these:
1) Making sure HBase Client Version is compatible with the HBase version on the cluster.
2) Adding hbase-site.xml to your application classpath, so that HBase client determines all the appropriate HBase configurations from it.
val conf = org.apache.hadoop.hbase.HBaseConfiguration.create()
// Instead of the following settings, pass hbase-site.xml in classpath
// conf.set("hbase.zookeeper.quorum", hbaseHost)
// conf.set("hbase.zookeeper.property.clientPort", hbasePort)
HBaseAdmin.checkHBaseAvailable(conf);
log.debug("HBase found! with conf " + conf);