From the perldoc on SOAP::Lite you might also try on_fault.

  on_fault()
           This lets you specify a handler for "on_fault" event. The
           default behavior is to die on an transport error and to do
           nothing on other error conditions. You may change this
           behavior globally (see "DEFAULT SETTINGS") or locally,
           for a particular object.

Something like this has worked for me quite well:

    # Something to store all the soap errors in - this is useful
    # if your code calls the soap service in a loop.
    #
    our @SOAP_ERRORS = ();

    ....

    # Get the current number of soap errors
    #
    my $error_count = scalar( @SOAP_ERRORS );

    my $service = SOAP::Lite
          -> on_fault( \&soapGetBad )
          -> service('http://server/function.asmx?WSDL');

    # If the previous number of errors is the same as the current
    # number of errors, you know that the above service call did
    # not cause an error so you can process the results or whatever.
    #
    if( scalar( @SOAP_ERRORS ) == $error_count ) {
        ...
    }

    ....

    sub soapGetBad {
        my $soap = shift;
        my $res = shift;
        if( ref( $res ) ) {
            chomp( my $err = $res->faultstring );
            push( @SOAP_ERRORS, "SOAP FAULT: $err" );
        }
        else {
            chomp( my $err = $soap->transport->status );
            push( @SOAP_ERRORS, "TRANSPORT ERROR: $err" );
        }
        return new SOAP::SOM;
    }
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