A federal jury in San Francisco has found that Monsanto's Roundup was a “substantial factor” in causing a Northern California man's cancer.

The unanimous ruling Tuesday from the six-member jury means that jurors will now move on to hear a second phase of Edwin Hardeman's case against Monsanto, the first bellwether case to go to trial in multidistrict litigation claiming Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans. In the trial's second phase, jurors will consider evidence about what the company knew about the herbicide's carcinogenic properties, its interactions with regulators and potential damages.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California, who is overseeing multidistrict claims the popular weed killer can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or NHL, bifurcated trial to first consider the question of whether the scientific evidence supported claims that Hardeman's Roundup use was a significant factor in him contracting NHL.