Task: songer_appbus

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 "private business and its executives". 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.

PER CURIAM.
Case No. 3422.
This case grew out of a claim presented by a bondholder in proceedings instituted in the District Court against the Public Gas Corporation and its subsidiaries wherein two mortgages executed by the corporations on April 1, 1923, and April 1, 1925, respectively, were foreclosed and receivers were appointed to wind up their affairs. On April I, 1926, these mortgagors and the Old Colony Oil & Gas Company, an affiliated corporation, executed another mortgage covering' the same and additional properties to seeure the payment of $4,000,000 of bonds, and suits to foreclose this mortgage and to wind up the corporation’s affairs were consolidated with the original cause. The bonds secured by the second mortgage of April 1, 192<5, consisted of an issue of $300,000, and were a second lien on the properties described. The Columbia Gas & Electric Company filed a claim in the proceedings based upon $146,000 of these second mortgage Bonds, and made the statement that it had acquired them from one Fred P. Stegmaier under an agreement which provided that, if the bonds should be established in the foreclosure proceedings- as valid outstanding bonds pledged as collateral for indebtedness hereinafter described, the Columbia Gas & Electric Corporation would pay to Stegmaier a specified- sum as an adfii-tional purchase price thereof. The corporation neither asserted nor denied that the bonds had been so pledged as valid outstanding obligations, but left the prosecution of the claim to Stegmaier together with one Samuel B. Weiler from whom Stegmaier acquired the bonds. Testimony was taken, and the special master, to whom the case had been referred, found that the $146,000 were a part of a valid issue of $300,000' of second mortgage bonds, and that they had been pledged with Weiler as collateral security to secure the payment of two notes in the amount of $83,000, and that subseouenlly the mortgage of April 1,1926, by the Old Colony Oil & Gas Company and other corporations, having been executed, the president of the corporate mortgagors delivered to Weiler bonds secured thereby in the sum of $150,000, and also a cheek of $5,000 to take the place of the $146,000 Public Gas Corporation second mortgage bonds, to the end that the latter might be redeemed; but the last-mentioned bonds wore not surrendered by Weiler. The contention was made on behalf of the claimant that it was not intended that Weiler should surrender the Public Gas Corporation bonds for redemption, but should retain them together with the Old Colony bonds as additional security for his loan, and that he subsequently delivered them to Stegmaier, when the latter as' indorser paid the notes. The special master found, contrary to this contention, that it was the intention of the parties to redeem the Public Gas Corporation bonds, and to substitute therefor the bonds of the Old Colony Oil & Gas Company, and the cheek of $5,000; and hence he held that neither Weiler nor Stegmaier nor the Columbia Gas & Electric-Company had any right, title, or interest in the bonds, and that the claim should be dismissed. The finding of the special master was confirmed by the District Judge.
We have examined the testimony, and we find no error in this ruling, and the decree of the District Court is therefore affirmed.
Case No. 3423.
A. B. McGrew, Jr., filed a claim in the proceedings described above in which lie declared that he was the owner of $24,000 of the second mortgage bonds of the Public Gas Corporation and that he had obtained them from John E. Mahon & Co., agent for the Old Colony Oil & Gas Company, the Public Gas Corporation and its subsidiaries, as collateral security for loans made by him to John E. Mahon & Company for the account of the affiliated corporations, and that the loans had not been repaid to him. Previously Mahon had filed a claim based on the same bonds, and it had been disallowed. Testimony was taken before the special master, who reported that McGrew testified that he received the bonds from Mahon knowing that they were the property of the Public Gas Corporation, and was told by Mahon that the corporation was indebted to him and that he held the bonds as security fo-r the debt, and that McGrew was taking only such right, title, or interest in the bonds as Mahon held. The special master also found, and it is not disputed, that at the time of the foreclosure proceedings, the corporations were not indebted to Mahon, but Mahon was indebted to lhem, and it was therefore held that neither Mahon nor McGrew had any right, title, or interest in the bonds, and the claim was dismissed. This conclusion was confirmed’ by the District Judge, and we are satisfied from our examination of the testimony that the conclusion was well founded. The testimony tended to show that Mahon was a broker who had authority to handle the bonds of the mortgagors and to borrow money on their behalf ; but McGrew himself testified that he received the bonds from Mahon in November, 1928, and held them as security for certain money paid to Mahon as a loan to the Old Colony Oil & Gas Company. The fixing of this date, by the claimant is conclusive of the ease even if it should appear that McGrew received the bonds free from any counterclaim which the corporation might have against Mahon. For it is conceded that, pri- or to the delivery of the bonds to McGrew, default had been made in the payment of interest on the bonds and the foreclosure suit had been instituted and receivers for the Public Gas Corporation had been appointed by the District Court. Tt follows that any authority which Mahon previously had to borrow money as the agent of the corporation had terminated. McGrew therefore had no valid claim against the proceeds from the sale of the properties either as a creditor of Mahon or of the corporation.
The deereg of the District Court is affirmed.

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

Answer: 3