diff --git a/maven-plugin-tools-generators/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/tools/plugin/generator/GeneratorUtils.java b/maven-plugin-tools-generators/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/tools/plugin/generator/GeneratorUtils.java
index 771b08b..05fef85 100644
--- a/maven-plugin-tools-generators/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/tools/plugin/generator/GeneratorUtils.java
+++ b/maven-plugin-tools-generators/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/tools/plugin/generator/GeneratorUtils.java
@@ -291,6 +291,11 @@ public final class GeneratorUtils
         {
             // cannot happen as every JVM must support UTF-8, see also class javadoc for java.nio.charset.Charset
         }
+        catch ( NullPointerException e )
+        {
+            // if this happens, then the JavaDoc is messed up, so just ignore it
+            return "";
+        }
 
         if ( StringUtils.isEmpty( commentCleaned ) )
         {