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.
This is an appeal from a decision of the District Court for the District of New Jersey dismissing a libel against a number of cases of chocolate-covered mints manufactured by the Delson Candy Company. The libel is based upon the charge that the packaging of Delson Mints is so slack that the purchasing public is deceived and that the packaging used by Delson does not serve such functional usefulness as to justify the form of package adopted.
The case has been here once before. See United States v. 174 Cases, etc., 3 Cir., 287 F.2d 246 (1961). The opinion of the Court, by Chief Judge Biggs, outlined the manner in which a trial court could and should make findings of fact on the issues involved. The case was sent back to the trial court for this purpose.
The trial court, pursuant to the directions of this Court, did make findings and made them in detail. The conclusion based on those findings is that the libel should be dismissed. 195 F.Supp. 326 (1961).
Bearing in mind that our function in such a case is not to reverse the trial court unless the fact conclusions are clearly erroneous, we shall affirm in this instance. The findings were responsive to the questions involved. They were based upon consideration of a large amount of testimony. Whether we would agree with each one had we the initial responsibility is not the point here. The sustaining of the findings because not clearly erroneous is, of course, no foundation for a similar conclusion in cases presenting other questions of fact.
The judgment of the district court will be 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: B