Index: lucene/highlighter/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/postingshighlight/TestPostingsHighlighter.java
===================================================================
--- lucene/highlighter/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/postingshighlight/TestPostingsHighlighter.java	(revision 1489005)
+++ lucene/highlighter/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/postingshighlight/TestPostingsHighlighter.java	(working copy)
@@ -123,6 +123,43 @@
     dir.close();
   }
   
+  // simple test with multiple values that make a result longer than maxLength.
+  public void testMaxLengthWithMultivalue() throws Exception {
+    Directory dir = newDirectory();
+    // use simpleanalyzer for more natural tokenization (else "test." is a token)
+    IndexWriterConfig iwc = newIndexWriterConfig(TEST_VERSION_CURRENT, new MockAnalyzer(random(), MockTokenizer.SIMPLE, true));
+    iwc.setMergePolicy(newLogMergePolicy());
+    RandomIndexWriter iw = new RandomIndexWriter(random(), dir, iwc);
+    
+    FieldType offsetsType = new FieldType(TextField.TYPE_STORED);
+    offsetsType.setIndexOptions(IndexOptions.DOCS_AND_FREQS_AND_POSITIONS_AND_OFFSETS);
+    Document doc = new Document();
+    
+    for(int i = 0; i < 3 ; i++) {
+      Field body = new Field("body", "", offsetsType);
+      body.setStringValue("This is a multivalued field");
+      doc.add(body);
+    }
+    
+    iw.addDocument(doc);
+    
+    IndexReader ir = iw.getReader();
+    iw.close();
+    
+    IndexSearcher searcher = newSearcher(ir);
+    PostingsHighlighter highlighter = new PostingsHighlighter(40);
+    Query query = new TermQuery(new Term("body", "field"));
+    TopDocs topDocs = searcher.search(query, null, 10, Sort.INDEXORDER);
+    assertEquals(1, topDocs.totalHits);
+    String snippets[] = highlighter.highlight("body", query, searcher, topDocs);
+    assertEquals(1, snippets.length);
+    assertTrue("Snippet should have maximum 40 characters plus the pre and post tags",
+        snippets[0].length() == (40 + "<b></b>".length()));
+    
+    ir.close();
+    dir.close();
+  }
+  
   public void testMultipleFields() throws Exception {
     Directory dir = newDirectory();
     IndexWriterConfig iwc = newIndexWriterConfig(TEST_VERSION_CURRENT, new MockAnalyzer(random(), MockTokenizer.SIMPLE, true));
Index: lucene/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/postingshighlight/PostingsHighlighter.java
===================================================================
--- lucene/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/postingshighlight/PostingsHighlighter.java	(revision 1489005)
+++ lucene/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/postingshighlight/PostingsHighlighter.java	(working copy)
@@ -669,7 +669,7 @@
     public void stringField(FieldInfo fieldInfo, String value) throws IOException {
       assert currentField >= 0;
       StringBuilder builder = builders[currentField];
-      if (builder.length() > 0) {
+      if (builder.length() > 0 && builder.length() < maxLength) {
         builder.append(' '); // for the offset gap, TODO: make this configurable
       }
       if (builder.length() + value.length() > maxLength) {