Task: songer_r_bus

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 "private business and its executives". 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.

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Senior Circuit Judge.
George Schulz, the plaintiff-appellant, sued his former employer, Serfilco, Ltd., the defendant-appellee, in district court claiming he had been constructively discharged July 1989 because of his age in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 621 et seq. Schulz asserted he was 66 years old at the time of discharge; that he had worked continuously for Serfilco since June 1971 except for the period September 1971 to October 1972, when he was ill because of exposure to polyvinyl chloride (“PVC”) fumes, including phosgene, generated in the machine shop where he had been assigned to work; that, as a consequence of this work-related illness, he received a workers-compensation award; that Serfilco knew PVC fumes caused his illness and, subsequently, had assigned him to work only in areas of the plant where he was not exposed to PVC fumes; that in July 1989 he was ordered to work in the machine shop for the first time since 1971; that he declined because he would again be exposed to PVC fumes; and that his immediate supervisor, Michael Berg, ordered him to work either in the machine shop at his then-current wage or elsewhere in the plant at a reduced wage, or be fired. Schulz “chose” the last option and was replaced by a twenty-seven year old whose salary was fifty-two percent of Schulz’s.
The suit proceeded routinely under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Local (denominated “General”) Rules for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Discovery was completed within one year, and Serfil-co moved for summary judgment pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. Local Rule 12(m) requires movants for summary judgment to “serve and file[, inter alia,] ... a supporting memorandum of law [and] a statement of the material facts as to which the moving party contends there is no genuine issue and that entitle the moving party to a judgment as a matter of law....” If the moving party does not comply, the motion may be lost: “Failure to submit such a statement constitutes grounds for denial of the motion.” Local Rule 12(m). Serfilco complied by filing with its motion a supporting memorandum of law and a detailed statement of uncontested facts. The statement was indeed detailed; it contained 129 enumerated, “uncontested facts” and 34 “supporting documents,” including affidavits from Michael Berg and Serfilco’s General Manager of Operations, Frank J. Ferraro, the two Schulz claimed had discriminated against him because of his age.
Schulz, represented by an attorney, Earl D. Yaffe, answered Serfilco’s motion and filed his own “Memorandum of Plaintiff in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment” and an accompanying 100-page document titled “Exhibits and Supporting Documents on Behalf of Plaintiff in Response to Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment.” In the memorandum he expressly admitted seventeen of Serfilco’s 129 enumerated statements of “uncontested facts” and denied or contested, in one form or another, thirty-seven others. Unfortunately for Schulz, he did not deny or otherwise contest Serfilco’s other seventy-five statements of fact, including statement No. 126, which stated age was not a factor in Serfilco’s dealings with Schulz:
126. At no time during their dealings with Plaintiff did either Ferraro or Mike Berg consider Plaintiff’s age or make any decisions based upon it. The age of any employee, including that of Plaintiff, is—and was—of no significance to either Ferraro or Mike Berg. (Ferraro Aff., par. 25; M. Berg Aff., par. 8).
By not denying the “fact” asserted in Serfilco’s statement No. 126, Schulz ran afoul of Local Rule 12(n), which places essentially the same requirements—and consequences for failure to comply—on a party opposing a motion for summary judgment as Local Rule 12(m) does on the moving party. The district court applied the rule strictly and deemed Schulz to have admitted that age was not a factor in his alleged constructive discharge. But age must be a factor under the ADEA:
It shall be unlawful for an employer—
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age....
29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1). See, for example, Skagen v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 910 F.2d 1498, 1500 (7th Cir.1990), and Visser v. Packer Engineering Associates, Inc., 924 F.2d 655, 657 (7th Cir.1991) (en banc). Consequently, the court granted Serfilco’s motion for summary judgment.
Schulz appeals. He does not challenge the rule itself; he does not argue that the rule cannot be strictly applied; nor does he argue that the fact stated was an ultimate issue of fact, beyond the reach of Local Rule 12(n). Rather, he argues that throughout his memorandum in opposition to the motion for summary judgment he alleged age was a factor, that we should find he constructively denied the “fact” in Serfilco’s statement No. 126, and that summary judgment should not have been granted because there are contested issues of fact. Because the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has regularly applied Local Rule 12(n) and its predecessors as the court did here and because we have previously upheld strict application of that rule, we affirm.
Local Rule 12(n), like Local Rule 12(m), clearly enunciates both what a party, in this instance the opponent to a motion for summary judgment, must do and the consequences for failing so to do.
Each party opposing a Rule 56 motion shall serve and file, [inter alia,] ... a concise response to the movant’s statement. That response shall contain (1) a response to each numbered paragraph in the moving party’s statement, including, in the case of any disagreement, specific references to the affidavits, parts of the record, and other supporting materials relied upon.... All material facts set forth in the statement required to be served by the moving party will be deemed to be admitted unless controverted by the statement of the opposing party-
Schulz’s response hardly resembles that contemplated by Local Rule 12(n) and in no way complies with its requirements. In denying statements of fact No. 18-34, 37, 40-45, 73-75, 77-79, 81-82, and 85-89 he did not respond to “each enumerated paragraph” and cited neither the record nor any affidavit. Instead, he cited only Serfilco’s letter of October 3, 1989, to attorney Yaffe offering Schulz reinstatement at full pay with accumulated benefits, a guarantee of no assignment to the machine shop, and a promise not to retaliate for Schulz’s having filed a claim with the EEOC.
More importantly and, as it turned out, fatally, Schulz did not specifically respond to enumerated statements No. 35-36, 38-39, 46-72, 76, 80, 83-84, and 90-129. Because of that omission, the court, pursuant to the “deemer” sentence in Local Rule 12(n), deemed those facts as admitted by plaintiff Schulz. Thus, through the operation of what he terms a pure technicality, Schulz was deemed to have admitted that, as Serfilco had stated in statement No. 126, age was not a factor in the constructive discharge he alleged.
The district court’s limited, although severe action here was not unprecedented. Judges in the Northern District of Illinois have strictly applied Local Rule 12(n) and its predecessors, 12(m) and 12(f), for a number of years. See, for example, Zenith Controls, Inc. v. Automatic Switch Co., 648 F.Supp. 1497, 1502 (N.D.Ill.1986); Home Insurance Co. v. Service America Corp., 662 F.Supp. 964, 966 (N.D.Ill.1987); and Davis v. Frapolly, 756 F.Supp. 1065, 1069 (N.D.Ill.1991), which was decided thirty days before Schulz filed his response.
We have repeatedly upheld the strict application of Local Rule 12(n) and its predecessors. Maksym v. Loesch, 937 F.2d 1237, 1240-41 (7th Cir.1991); Bell, Boyd & Lloyd v. Tapy, 896 F.2d 1101 (7th Cir.1990). See also Skagen v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 910 F.2d 1498 (7th Cir.1990). In Appley v. West, 929 F.2d 1176, 1180 (7th Cir.1991), we stated that if the party opposing the motion for summary judgment disputed a movant’s statement, Local Rule 12(n) required that opponent to identify and document the dispute in his or her response to the motion. The opponent in Appley had not; thus, we held, “The district court properly granted [the] motion for summary judgment.” Id.
Schulz argues “that it would [not] be particularly helpful to an understanding of the issues for Schulz to have countered that ‘my age and rate of pay was so the motivation for the decision to put me in the machine shop.' ” That may be so, but the rule requires otherwise: it requires both denial and support for that denial. Furthermore, whether to enforce Local Rule 12(n) strictly or somewhat leniently seems to be within the discretion of the district judge. Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, 896 F.2d at 1103. Accordingly, we find the court did not abuse its discretion in strictly enforcing Local Rule 12(n).
Schulz further argues that “a so-called Statement of Uncontested Facts should be limited to facts that are truly uncontested.” That, too, may be. Schulz, however, has cited no authority for that proposition, and, accordingly, the point is forfeited. Fed. R.App.P. 28(a)(4); Pelfresne v. Village of Williams Bay, 917 F.2d 1017, 1023 (7th Cir.1990). Anyway, Local Rule 12(n) provides the opportunity for an opponent to contest “uncontested facts.”
Because the district court did not improperly deem Schulz to have admitted age was not a factor and because, under the ADEA, discharge must be “because of the individual’s age,” we need not address Schulz’s other arguments that issues of uncontested fact exist. An essential element of his claim is missing; without it the claim can proceed no farther.
Age-discrimination plaintiffs, unlike those who seek the protection of other employment discrimination statutes, occupy a favored position under the law: they “enjoy the right ‘to a trial by jury of any issue of fact’ pertinent to the statutory violation they allege.” Visser, 924 F.2d at 660 (Flaum, J., dissenting; citing 29 U.S.C. § 626(c)(2)). Consequently, “[c]aution is required in granting summary judgment. ...” Id. at 660 (opinion by Posner, J.). Thus, it may appear that, because of a mere technicality, “we have denied the plaintiff in this case a basic right of all mankind: the right to rise at least to the height of failing.” Visser, 924 F.2d at 664 (Bauer, C.J., dissenting). Plaintiff’s trial attorney, who also represented Schulz in this appeal, admitted at oral argument that, unfortunately, he was not “aware of” Local Rule 12(n) at the time he filed Schulz’s response. Still, all need not have been irretrievably lost. Schulz, through his attorney, might have asked the district court for leave to amend or, perhaps, supplement his response; a motion could have been brought under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) to alter the court’s order granting summary judgment, as was done in Beraha v. Baxter Health Care Corp., No. 88 C 9898, 1990 WL 114197 (N.D.Ill. Aug. 1, 1990), affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, 956 F.2d 1436 (7th Cir.1992). We have not been advised that any such resuscitation was attempted; certainly, no such relief was granted.
The order of the district court is
Affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 1