Task: songer_r_natpr

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.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "natural persons". 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.

LEWIS, Circuit Judge.
Invoking the jurisdiction of this court under section 19 of the Natural Gas Act, 15 U.S.C. § 717r and section 10 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 1009, Colorado Interstate Gas Company petitioned for review of an order of the Federal Power Commission entered April 13, 1966. Similar petitions by Natural Gas Pipeline Company and Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Company were later filed in the Seventh and Eighth Circuits respectively, were subsequently transferred to this court and by our order were consolidated for the purpose of these proceedings. The subject order affects the scope of the so-called Hugoton-Anadarko Area Rate Proceeding which was initiated in November 1963 under sections 4, 5 and 15 of the Natural Gas Act to determine just and reasonable rates for interstate sales by producers of natural gas within the designated geographic area. Petitioners, while principally in the business of transporting natural gas by pipeline, are among the largest producers of gas in the Hugoton-Anadarko area. The specific effect of the order upon them is to terminate their participation as producers in the Hugoton-Anadarko Area Rate Proceeding and place them, along with all other pipeline producers, in an exclusive Pipeline Production Area Rate Proceeding. The stated objectives of the order are to establish a separate forum for determination of “whether the Commission may or should depart from the cost-of-service method in fixing the price of pipeline produced gas” and, by so doing, to expedite the determination of area rates for independent producers in the Hugoton-Anadarko area.
The case is before us on respondent Commission’s motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. The basis for the motion is that the subject order is “purely interlocutory and procedural” and that petitioners have not demonstrated present aggrievement as required by section 19(b) of the Natural Gas Act, 15 U.S.C. § 717r(b). The Commission also requests that the time for filing the certification of record be enlarged pending disposition of the motion to dismiss. Petitioners oppose the motion to dismiss on the ground that their present aggrievement from the order is demonstrated by the Commission’s denial, or at least postponement, of their asserted right to a parity of treatment with those in the area with whom they as pipeline producers must compete. Petitioners also object to further enlargement of the time for filing a certified record on the ground that such record will demonstrate that petitioners are presently suffering economic loss through the delay and uncertainty occasioned by initiation of a new proceeding. Although both sides have attempted to bolster their respective positions with extensive argument from the record on the merits, our consideration of the case at this juncture is limited to the issue of whether a jurisdictional defect appears in the allegations of the several petitions.
Petitioners’ participation as pipeline producers in the Hugoton-Anadarko Area Rate Proceeding has been premised upon an order of the Commission dated June 29, 1964, which provided for an enlargement of the proceeding to include “consideration of the extent to which, if any, the rates or cost allowances for pipeline gas production should be regulated on an area basis.” Thereafter petitioners actively participated in the proceedings under the guidelines of the June 1964 order until, upon motion of staff counsel, the subject order of severance was issued ex parte by the Commission. The order recited that it is now the considered opinion of the Commission that the area rate proceeding does not provide “an appropriate vehicle for evaluating the general pipeline production issue” and concludes, from experience gained in the proceeding and from analysis of the present evidentiary record of the area rate proceeding, that the public good will best be served by severance of the issues and consideration of such issues in separate proceedings. Petitioners deny that the record indicates or dictates that the public good will be served by the severance of the issues and assert that the order constitutes a complete denial of due process, procedurally and substantively.
It is immediately apparent that consideration cannot be given to the motion to dismiss these actions if the jurisdiction of the Commission to issue the April 1966 order is dependent on the present record in the area rate proceeding. See Amerada Petroleum Corp. v. Federal Power Commission, 10 Cir., 338 F.2d 808; Sunray DX Oil Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 10 Cir., 351 F.2d 395. The administrative record is not before us and the legal impact of that record cannot be now considered on the merits. However we do not consider the jurisdiction of the Commission to issue the subject order to be dependent on specifics that may be revealed by the particulars of evidence contained in the record. Rather we think the dispositive question to be whether under the circumstances of this case the Commission has the unreviewable power to limit the scope of its investigation after once having set the guidelines and having required and allowed petitioners to proceed accordingly for a prolonged period of time. In other words, -the Commission under the shelter of its administrative expertise cannot expose petitioners to a denial of due process. And in this regard petitioners contend that the order violates the mandate of section 6(a) of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 1005(a), to “proceed with reasonable dispatch to conclude any matter presented to it; ” exposes petitioners to great expense, delay and uncertainty; denies to them area rate treatment constituting a disparity of treatment in violation of section 8(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 1007(b); and, in totality, denies to them the compulsion of the Fifth Amendment.
Although this court, as well as others, might term the order of severance to be “procedurally abhorrent,” we think it clear that each contention of petitioners has earlier been negated by the decisions of this court in Amax Petroleum Corp. v. Federal Power Commission, 10 Cir., 350 F.2d 92, and Frontier Airlines, Inc. v. Civil Aeronautics Board, 10 Cir., 349 F.2d 587. In Amax we stated and it is applicable here:
“It is true, as petitioners point out with understandable emphasis, that the subject order is premised upon a finding of the Commission that makes reference to ‘inadequate records of many small producers’ and uncertainty of representative responses. Petitioners assert such phraseology to constitute a prejudgment of their proposed claims. We cannot agree that such conclusion follows as a matter of law nor as an inference of fact affecting the merits. The Commission, as a matter of expertise, may draw upon their experience in determining the ground rules for their own investigation and may divert their general efforts in accord with their specialized knowledge; the Commission cannot, of course, under the guise of expertise, deny a specific right. But this latter they have not done by the subject order.”
No claim is made that the Commission order of June 1964 expanding the proceedings to include the issue of pipeline production was not jurisdictionally sound. Indeed that order premises the petitioners’ present claims to the right to continued participation. The Commission now states, in effect, that the order of expansion was a mistake and that it has recognized the mistake, at least in part, through knowledge and experience obtained in the proceeding itself. By expanding or limiting the scope of its investigation the Commission is exercising its expertise by determining where best it can employ its administrative function. Neither the fact of administrative expertise nor the sources of its conception are proper subjects for judicial review. And the fact that petitioners are now exposed or subjected to some expense, uncertainty and delay because the ground rules were changed in the middle of the game is but an unfortunate side effect springing from the frailty of the administrative decisional process. But no constitutional nor statutory right is infringed and it has long been recognized that judicial review of the preliminary procedural processes of the Commission would only serve to increase the inherent difficulties of the process.
Petitioners’ claims that the order of severance denies to them area rate treatment resulting in an unlawful disparity of rate are comparable to the contentions advanced, considered and rejected by this court in Frontier. If we assume, without deciding, that petitioners are, as they allege, entitled to a parity of rate treatment with the independent producers such right is not denied to them by the instant order. Petitioners’ rights are not presently barred by indirection and their apprehensive claims do not constitute an aggrievement.
We conclude that the order of April 13, 1966, is interlocutory in nature, that petitioners are not presently aggrieved thereby as defined by section 19(b) of the Natural Gas Act and that the petitions fail to state a jurisdictional subject for review.
The petitions are severally dismissed.
. The “Hugoton-Anadarko Area” consists of contiguous natural gas producing areas in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
. 15 U.S.C. §§ 717c, 717d, 717n.
. Petitioners remain as parties to the Area Rate Proceedings,
. See concurring: opinion of Commissioner Bagge.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 0