I have a custom exception class annotated to return a given HttpStatus:
HttpStatus
@ResponseStatus(value=HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST, reason=\"Invalid parameter\")
The "reason" is optional, so you can omit that and implements the abstract method public String reason passing the Error. Link: http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/bind/annotation/ResponseStatus.html