Task: songer_appnatpr

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 appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judge:
An indictment charging appellee Fraley, under 18 U.S.C. § 1510(a), with obstructing the communication of information of a suspected crime from a possible witness to a Special Agent of the United States Department of Agriculture was dismissed by the District Court on the ground that the statute did not fit Fraley’s conduct. This conclusion, educed from the law’s legislative history, is now appealed by the Government.
The facts, undisputed on the motion to dismiss, were these. On the evening of December 16, 1974, Special Agent Sheldon Goodrich, Office of Investigation, United States Department of Agriculture, an investigator within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1510(a), visited Mrs. Isabell Geesaman, an employee of the Fraley Meat Packing Company of Thurmont, Maryland, at her home in Catoctin Furnace, Maryland, in order to interview her concerning apprehended violations of Federal meat inspection laws by the Fraley company. Told of her rights, Mrs. Geesaman sought and obtained consent to a telephone call for advice. After a call, she made certain admissions concerning alleged violations. Questioning was interrupted by a loud banging on Mrs. Geesaman’s back door, announcing the coming of the defendant-appellee James Austin Fraley, Sr., president of the Fraley company, and his son, the vice-president.
Fraley, Sr., said: “We are honest people trying to make a living, why don’t you leave us alone.” “You get out of here and get out of town right now. Don’t even come through this town again. You have two minutes to get out of here or you ain’t never going to get out.” Agent Goodrich identified himself as a Federal officer and asked Fraley, Sr., if he were threatening him. Fraley, Sr., replied, “You’re damned right I am. I have a shotgun out there and you better get out of here right now.” In the face of cooler counsel by his son, Fraley, Sr., persisted: “I don’t pare who he is, if he does not get out of here now he is never going to get out.” After Agent Goodrich left the house and walked to his car, Fraley, Sr., had the last word: “Your 120 seconds are almost up, you better get in that car and get out of here.”
The indictment condenses these facts and relates them to 18 U.S.C. § 1510(a), which provides for the punishment of:
“(a) Whoever willfully endeavors by means of bribery, misrepresentation, intimidation, or force or threats thereof to obstruct, delay, or prevent the communication of information relating to a violation of any criminal statute of the United States by any person to a criminal investigator; . . .
The burden of this enactment at once emerging is to keep unobstructed the “communication of information . . . to a criminal investigator.” Its primary subject of protection is the transmission of the words of a prospective informant or witness; it is the “giving” of information for which security is sought. Quite distant from its purpose is the concept of shielding informants or witnesses from harm, physical or otherwise — this objective is entrusted to the second paragraph of Section 1510(a). Moreover, the communicatee’s safety is not a regard of the statute save insofar as that person’s ability to receive the information may be impaired by injury or restraint.
Notably, although the factual statement includes a recital of threats of physical attack upon the investigator, that is not the indictment offense. The core of the imputation of crime is the obstructing, delaying and preventing of the transmittal of information, the verbal assault upon the investigator simply describing the means of committing the crime.
Unlike the District Judge we find in the legislative history no ground for limiting the statute’s scope merely to safeguarding informants and witnesses against intimidation or injury interfering with the furnishing of information to a Federal investigator. There is general language in the House Report No. 658, U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1967, p. 1760, so summarizing the legislation when it was proposed, but this is fully countered in this introduction:
“Purposes of the Bill
The purpose of the proposed legislation is to amend chapter 73, title 18, United States Code (relating to obstruction of the administration of justice), by adding a new section prohibiting the obstruction of Federal criminal investigations.”
Consultation with the law’s history is, it seems to us, a needless exploration, for the statute itself speaks with vigor and clarity to its end — the free channeling of information to Federal agents. Precedent generally vindicating our exposition is United States v. Oregon, 366 U.S. 643, 648, 81 S.Ct. 1278, 1281, 6 L.Ed.2d 575 (1961) wherein it is observed:
“Having concluded that the provisions of [the statute] are clear and unequivocal on their face, we find no need to resort to the legislative history of the Act.”
It follows that the judgment of dismissal must be vacated and the case remanded for trial.
So Ordered.
. “Whoever injures any person in his person or property on account of the giving by such person or by any other person of any such information to any criminal investigator—
“Shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

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

Answer: 0