We have seen exactly the same behavior in our application when remote clients disconnect. Our versions are:
jboss 5.1.0 GA
jboss-messaging-1.4.6.GA.SP1
jboss-remoting-2_5_3_SP1
so we are already using the version which should fix https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBMESSAGING-1805
But we have a slightly older remoting jar?
Have you seen the issue again since you upgraded to messaging 1.4.6.SP1 or did that really fix it?