Task: songer_numresp

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of respondents in the case. If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

PER CURIAM.
Plaintiff appellant sued the defendants for malicious interference with his contract rights, and on this appeal challenges four rulings of the district court: (1) denial of plaintiff’s motion for a jury trial, (2) denial of his motion for a continuance, (3) dismissal of the action for lack of prosecution, and (4) denial of plaintiff’s motion for a new trial.
Although the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure preserve the right of trial by jury, Fed.R.Civ.P. 38(a), a timely demand for a jury trial must be filed. Fed.R.Civ.P. 38(b), (d). Since the plaintiff failed to file such a demand, the district court properly denied the motion for a jury trial.
The granting of a continuance is a matter which lies within the sound discretion of the trial court, and the district court’s ruling on such motion will not be disturbed absent a showing of abuse of discretion. Montgomery v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 367 F.2d 917 (9 Cir. 1966). The plaintiff sought a continuance to enable him to contact material witnesses, but the record reveals that he had neither interviewed nor subpoenaed any of these individuals. The record further indicates that plaintiff knew nothing of the testimony he expected to elicit from these witnesses, and under these circumstances it is manifestly clear that the district judge did not abuse his discretion in denying the motion for a continuance.
District courts have “sound judicial discretion” to dismiss an action for “plaintiff’s failure to prosecute it with reasonable diligence * * Timmons v. United States, 194 F.2d 357 (4 Cir. 1952). The plaintiff had ample opportunity to develop evidence in support of his case, but he neither interviewed not subpoenaed witnesses whose whereabouts he knew. Furthermore, the plaintiff himself declined to testify. The district court’s dismissal of the action finds strong support in the record and was well within the court’s discretion.
The decision whether to grant or deny a new trial is also a discretionary matter with the trial court. Hopkins v. Coen, 431 F.2d 1055 (6 Cir. 1970); United States for Use and Benefit of Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Bucon Construction Company, 430 F.2d 420 (5 Cir. 1970). In his motion for a new trial the plaintiff asserted that he had discovered new evidence and that he had been prejudiced by reason of bias on the part of the trial judge. However, the plaintiff refused to disclose his newly discovered evidence to the court, implying that he feared such disclosure might result in intimidation of his material witnesses. This conduct on the part of the plaintiff made it impossible for the district court to appraise the alleged new evidence as a ground for granting a new trial. The plaintiff’s contention that the trial court was biased finds no support whatever in the record. Accordingly, we find that the district court acted properly in denying the motion for a new trial.
Finding no error in the challenged rulings, the action of the district court is affirmed.
Affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 99