Task: songer_realresp

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.
Your task is to determine whether or not the formally listed respondents in the case are the "real parties." That is, are they the parties whose real interests are most directly at stake? (e.g., in some appeals of adverse habeas corpus petition decisions, the respondent is listed as the judge who denied the petition, but the real parties are the prisoner and the warden of the prison) (another example would be "Jones v A 1990 Rolls Royce" where Jones is a drug agent trying to seize a car which was transporting drugs - the real party would be the owner of the car). For cases in which an independent regulatory agency is the listed respondent, the following rule was adopted: If the agency initiated the action to enforce a federal rule or the agency was sued by a litigant contesting an agency action, then the agency was coded as a real party. However, if the agency initially only acted as a forum to settle a dispute between two other litigants, and the agency is only listed as a party because its ruling in that dispute is at issue, then the agency is considered not to be a real party. For example, if a union files an unfair labor practices charge against a corporation, the NLRB hears the dispute and rules for the union, and then the NLRB petitions the court of appeals for enforcement of its ruling in an appeal entitled "NLRB v Widget Manufacturing, INC." the NLRB would be coded as not a real party. Note that under these definitions, trustees are usually "real parties" and parents suing on behalf of their children and a spouse suing on behalf of their injured or dead spouse are also "real parties."

PER CURIAM:
After a consolidated trial of complaints made by three different persons involving acts committed at different times, appellant Evans was convicted, in the former Court of General Sessions of New York County, of two counts of robbery, two counts of sodomy, three counts of assault with intent to commit sodomy and two counts of assault with intent to commit robbery. Appellant now claims that his detention is unconstitutional because the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires separate trials in cases where the crimes charged were of such a sordid nature that allowing the jury to hear evidence as to all acts might prejudice them when considering the specific complaint of each victim.
Section 279 of the New York Code of Criminal Procedure allows for the consolidation of charges of the “same or a similar character,” at the discretion of the trial judge. Compare Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The trial judge charged the jury:
“each count is to be taken as a separate and distinct case; you decide each matter as you wish, but you cannot carry over the testimony from one complainant to another. They are not related in any manner whatsoever. * ■* *»»
We must assume that the jury followed these instructions. See Delli Paoli v. United States, 352 U.S. 232, 242, 77 S.Ct. 294, 1 L.Ed.2d 278 (1957); Op-per v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 94-95, 75 S.Ct. 158, 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954).
At most we are presented with an abuse of discretion by a state trial judge in granting the motion for consolidation. Compare United States v. Lotsch, 102 F.2d 35 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 307 U.S. 622, 59 S.Ct. 793, 83 L.Ed. 1500 (1939) with Note, Joint and Single Trials Under Rules 8 and 14 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 74 Yale L.J. 553, 556-60 (1965). Appellant has cited no ease which indicates that this is an issue of constitutional dimensions. Neither United States ex rel. Scoleri v. Banmiller, 310 F.2d 720 (3d Cir. 1962), cert. denied, 374 U.S. 828, 83 S.Ct. 1866, 10 L.Ed.2d 1051 (1963), which concerned the wholly unrelated question of a unitary trial of the issues of guilt and penalty pursuant to a statutory mandate, nor any of the other cases cited by appellant, hold that joinder in such a situation is constitutionally invalid.
The court wishes to express to Anthony L. Fletcher its gratitude for his conscientious and able handling of this appeal.
Affirmed.

Question: Are the formally listed respondents in the case the "real parties", that is, are they the parties whose real interests are most directly at stake?
A. both 1st and 2nd listed respondents are real parties (or only one respondent, and that respondent is a real party)
B. the 1st respondent is not a real party
C. the 2nd respondent is not a real party
D. neither the 1st nor the 2nd respondents are real parties
E. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: A