Two days ago I was hit with the exception below that seemed to have come from nowhere:

ERROR -
[org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.
[Catalina].[localhost].[/cxws].[OrderProcessClient]]
- Servlet.service() for servlet OrderProcessClient threw exception
java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError

After searching high and low I finally stumbled upon an old archive of the same error posted to the Axis2 list. Although the post did not resolve the issue it did mention something that made me think. I remembered that a couple days back I updated to Axis2 1.1.1 but never upgraded my webapp on my local machine not did I update my app on the QA machine.

I downloaded the .war from the 1.1.1 release unpacked it in Tomcat, copied the services, config files and other classes I had from my previous app into the Axis2 webapp and restarted Tomcat.

Voila! The problem was fixed and my app is now running like a bomb. I hope this helps someone else out as I saw a lot of posts of this question with no resolve.