The present description of the public Date parse(String text, ParsePosition pos) in SimpleDateFormat does not describe the effect of non-lenient mode for parsing. 
In order to reduce developer confusion when invalid dates are parsed this information should be explicitly mentioned either in the method description or the overview of SimpleDateFormat.
For example the evaluation of Bug 4920608 can be included
"Use non-lenient mode for parsing, which will throw ParseException with invalid dates. "
###@###.### 2005-03-09 13:37:42 GMT