Section 5.4.3 of the VM spec describes how symbolic references in the constant pool are resolved. If the first attempt to resolve a symbolic reference fails then subsequent attempts are required to fail with the same error as the initial attempt. One minor point with the current wording is that the description doesn't make it clear if virtual machine errors (StackOverflowError, OutOfMemoryError, InternalError) should be cached like genuine errors. According to Gilad, these are special cases and not what was intended by the spec. It would be good to have this clarified in a future revision of the specification.