diff --git a/docs/releasenotes.html b/docs/releasenotes.html
index a2b7bdf6f..b563e1f60 100644
--- a/docs/releasenotes.html
+++ b/docs/releasenotes.html
@@ -137,6 +137,9 @@
         <li class="body">MagicNumberCheck throws NumberFormatException
         with negative octal and hex ints and longs.</li>
 
+        <li class="body">JavadocStyleCheck throws StringIndexOutOfBoundsException
+        when open tag character, &lt;, is the last character on a line.</li>
+
       </ul>
 
       <p class="body">
diff --git a/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/checks/javadoc/HtmlTag.java b/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/checks/javadoc/HtmlTag.java
index 0be76dc51..94b030edc 100755
--- a/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/checks/javadoc/HtmlTag.java
+++ b/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/checks/javadoc/HtmlTag.java
@@ -82,6 +82,9 @@ class HtmlTag
      */
     public boolean isCloseTag()
     {
+        if (mPosition == (mText.length() - 1)) {
+            return false;
+        }
         return (mText.charAt(mPosition + 1) == '/');
     }