NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory Error

Question

I am getting this error after upgrading my project to Java 8.

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory

Commons-logging is definitely present in the classpath and there is no issue compiling the code. However, at runtime JVM is not able to locate LogFactory. The issue only comes into picture when I am running in Java 8. It works fine with all versions below Java 8. We are also using Maven 1.X in the project.

    java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:154)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:127)
    at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:106)
    at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:124)
    at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:109)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:118)
    at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:208)
    at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:203)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.junit3.JUnit3TestReference.run(JUnit3TestReference.java:121)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:459)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:678)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:382)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:192)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:381)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
    ... 21 more