diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 7ea3321e90e..68717dbe76e 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -135,6 +135,8 @@ Release 0.91.0 - Unreleased
                (Akash Ashok via Ted Yu)
    HBASE-4037  Add timeout annotations to preempt surefire killing
                all tests
+   HBASE-4024 Major compaction may not be triggered, even though region
+              server log says it is triggered (Ted Yu)
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-3290  Max Compaction Size (Nicolas Spiegelberg via Stack)  
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
index 0bc1c234bc7..97385c8951f 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
@@ -971,8 +971,8 @@ public class Store implements HeapSize {
     }
 
     // major compact on user action or age (caveat: we have too many files)
-    boolean majorcompaction = (forcemajor || isMajorCompaction(filesToCompact))
-      && filesToCompact.size() < this.maxFilesToCompact;
+    boolean majorcompaction = filesToCompact.size() < this.maxFilesToCompact
+      && (forcemajor || isMajorCompaction(filesToCompact));
 
     if (!majorcompaction && !hasReferences(filesToCompact)) {
       // we're doing a minor compaction, let's see what files are applicable