A swipe on status bar opens on quick setting instead of notifcation panel
Maybe it's some TouchWiz bug and if you can't figure out what's wrong, you could use a third party app called Color Status Bar. 
It has some themes built-in for notification panels.
Or you could also have a look at some modded TouchWiz-like notification app in this XDA thread

EDIT:
If the issue is solved in Safe mode, then its evidence that downloaded app caused the phone to behave that way.
Safemode allows you to boot up your device with only the core pre-loaded applications running, meaning any apps you’ve downloaded won’t be running.
Copy the build.prop to external sdcard when in safemode and compare it with the build.prop when the issue occured. That will give some insight on  ​why it might've occured.
Restore that build.prop, if the issue is still not solved in Normal mode.