The problem here is that spring tries to convert date string to Date and fails. When that happens TypeMismatchException (which wraps IllegalArgumentException, which in turn wraps ParseException) is thrown and you should handle that instead of NumberFormatException.

If you change the exception type to Exception it gets handled as TypeMismatchException inherits Exception.

If you're using any logging framework, try turning debug logging on for spring mvc classes, it can clear things up a lot.

The problem here is that spring tries to convert date string to Date and fails. When that happens TypeMismatchException (which wraps IllegalArgumentException, which in turn wraps ParseException) is thrown and you should handle that instead of NumberFormatException.

When you changed the exception class to Exception it got handled, as TypeMismatchException extends Exception.

A tip: if you're using any logging framework, try turning debug logging on for spring mvc classes, it can clear things up a lot.

For example put something like this in your lo4j.propeties:

log4j.logger.org.springframework.servlet=DEBUG