Okay, this is embarrassing. Here is the issue, a typo. I discovered it by logging in my @beforeEach method and then seeing where a successful run worked and a non successful run failed. Since the beforeEach never ran I started looking very carefully at the run command. It was a lowercase c:

// naughty command: mvn -Dtest=Lab5bTests#testAllSubclassesSetPackaging test
// proper command:  mvn -Dtest=Lab5bTests#testAllSubClassesSetPackaging test

So since it never ever ran the test I just re-typed the command and found the error.

Thanks for watching! Who invented case sensitivity anyway? Ok, not as bad as white-space sensitive, but still...