Just a quick answer from a jetty point of view.... the TCCL for the webapp is set by jetty in the ContextHandler and is not unset until the finally block is called. So in the stack trace,you can see: 12:48:11,673 ERROR [org.jboss.logging.util.LoggerStream.write(LoggerStream.java:152)] at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:726) So as far as jetty is concerned the TCCL should be set. Of course that does not stop something else unsetting or setting it to something different. I've created a jetty task: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/JETTY-544 to track this issue , so if it does look like a Jetty bug we can pick it up. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4138837#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...