diff --git a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/scheduler/TaskSetManager.scala b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/scheduler/TaskSetManager.scala
index 4b19beb43fd6b6d8ae37509caf173fd9cb79374a..cf97877476d54e630dbf146bff825325d79148a2 100644
--- a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/scheduler/TaskSetManager.scala
+++ b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/scheduler/TaskSetManager.scala
@@ -114,14 +114,9 @@ private[spark] class TaskSetManager(
   // treated as stacks, in which new tasks are added to the end of the
   // ArrayBuffer and removed from the end. This makes it faster to detect
   // tasks that repeatedly fail because whenever a task failed, it is put
-  // back at the head of the stack. These collections may contain duplicates
-  // for two reasons:
-  // (1): Tasks are only removed lazily; when a task is launched, it remains
-  // in all the pending lists except the one that it was launched from.
-  // (2): Tasks may be re-added to these lists multiple times as a result
-  // of failures.
-  // Duplicates are handled in dequeueTaskFromList, which ensures that a
-  // task hasn't already started running before launching it.
+  // back at the head of the stack. They are also only cleaned up lazily;
+  // when a task is launched, it remains in all the pending lists except
+  // the one that it was launched from, but gets removed from them later.
   private val pendingTasksForExecutor = new HashMap[String, ArrayBuffer[Int]]
 
   // Set of pending tasks for each host. Similar to pendingTasksForExecutor,
@@ -186,7 +181,9 @@ private[spark] class TaskSetManager(
   private def addPendingTask(index: Int) {
     // Utility method that adds `index` to a list only if it's not already there
     def addTo(list: ArrayBuffer[Int]) {
-      list += index
+      if (!list.contains(index)) {
+        list += index
+      }
     }
 
     for (loc <- tasks(index).preferredLocations) {