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.

HOLMES, Circuit Judge.
This is an action by the appellant, a Tennessee corporation, against the appellees, all of whom are citizens of Louisiana. The suit is of a civil nature, wholly between citizens of different states, and the matter in controversy exceeds in value the sum of three thousand dollars exclusive of interest and costs. Federal jurisdiction of the case depends solely upon diversity of citizenship and the requisite jurisdictional amount. A motion to dismiss for want of federal jurisdiction was filed by the defendants, but this motion was impliedly overruled by the action of the court below in dismissing the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.
Olan Mills, Inc., of Tennessee, a foreign corporation engaged in the photography business, was doing business in Louisiana, and was planning to canvass the Bogalusa trade area. The local photographers, of which there were three in number, objected to the entry of Olan Mills into this area. In the interest of harmony, a meeting was held in the office of the Mayor of Bogalusa on Thursday, June 5, 1952. At this meeting, the alleged defamatory remarks were orally made by the two individual defendants. The next morning, the defendant Enterprise Publishing Company printed and published said defamatory utterances. In its complaint, the appellant set forth the facts constituting said libel and slander, its business reputation, and the deliberate intention of the appellees to injure plaintiff. It failed to allege malice.
Defendants White and Mornhinveg filed motions to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction, misjoinder of parties, and failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The Enterprise Publishing Company raised the same objections, and, in addition, urged that its communications were privileged. After consideration of the matter upon briefs and oral argument, the court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.
We think that the court committed no error in not sustaining the motion to dismiss for lack of federal jurisdiction. With respect to the requisite jurisdictional amount, the allegation of the complaint is that the matter in controversy exceeds the sum of three thousand dollars exclusive of interest and costs, and this is sufficient unless it appears elsewhere in the complaint or by proof aliunde that less than that amount is involved. We find nothing in the complaint, or elsewhere in the record, to indicate a lack of good faith on the part of the plaintiff in seeking to recover damages in excess of three thousand dollars; and, so far as the amount in controversy is concerned, the determination of the right to invoke federal jurisdiction lies in the good faith of the plaintiff. Bell v. Preferred Life Society, 320 U.S. 238, 64 S.Ct. 5, 88 L.Ed. 15; Turmine v. West Jersey & Seashore R. R., D.C., 44 F.2d 614; Associated Press v. Emmett, D.C., 45 F.Supp. 907; 1 Barron and Holtzoff, Federal Practice and Procedure, pp. 47, 426; Dobie on Federal Procedure, Sec. 56, p. 133. In St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 289, 58 S.Ct. 586, 590, 82 L.Ed. 845, the court said: “It must appear to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than the jurisdictional amount to justify dismissal.”
Neither do we think that the court erred in not dismissing the action on the ground of a misjoinder of parties. Under Rule 21 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A., misjoinder of parties is not a ground for dismissal of an action, but parties may be dropped or added by order of the court on motion of any party or on its own initiative at any stage of the action, and on such terms as may be just. Under Rule 20 of said rules of civil procedure, all persons may be joined in one action as defendants if there is asserted against them jointly, severally, or in the alternative, any right to relief in respect of or arising out of the same transaction or series of transactions or occurrences, and if any question of law or fact common to all of them will arise in the action.
Turning to the merits, as to the appellee White, the complaint shows, among other things, that his defamatory-statements were directed at the appellant, and that any person hearing them would in reason so construe them. The motion to dismiss admits all the well-pleaded allegations of the complaint. It therefore admits that White (one of the defendants) asserted that you cannot deal in a business manner with a concern of this kind; it admits he said that to attempt to deal with such an organization is like the United Nations trying to deal with the Communists in the truce talks. “You attempt to deal,” he added, “it’s whole hog or nothing with them. This concern is a parasite. They are not a part of anything.” Such allegations tendered an issue for the jury, but the appellee White did not join issue on them; by his motion to dismiss, he admitted them. Sweeney v. Schenectady Union Pub. Co., 2 Cir., 122 F.2d 288, affirmed, 316 U.S. 642, 62 S.Ct. 1031, 86 L.Ed. 1727, rehearing denied, 316 U.S. 710, 72 S.Ct. 1266, 86 L.Ed. 1776; Naihaus v. Louisiana Weekly Pub. Co., 176 La. 240, 145 So. 527; 5 Barron & Holtzoff, Federal Practice and Procedure 191; 53 C.J.S., Libel and Slander, § 11, p. 52; 33 Am.Jur., p. 181, Sec. 192.
As to the defendant Mornhinveg, however, the case is different; the allegations attributed to her simply referred to travelling photographers as a class, and the second part of it was not slanderous per se so far as the appellant was concerned. No innuendo was averred with reference to her remarks, and, as has been stated, no malice was alleged. The complaint did not show that, as against Mrs. Mornhinveg, the plaintiff was entitled to relief. Rule 8(a) (2) Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Therefore, the judgment of dismissal should be affirmed as to her.
As to the Enterprise Publishing Company, its claim of privilege cannot be availed of by a motion to dismiss; it must be pleaded by answer, since pleas are abolished under the federal rules of civil procedure. There may be an issue for the jury on this subject together with other issues. If the company had a qualified privilege, it may have gone beyond the scope of such defense. Such matters belong to a trial on the merits before the court and a jury, not to a motion to dismiss which admits so much. Kraft v. New York Herald, D.C., 6 F.2d 644; Spanel v. Pegler, 7 Cir., 160 F.2d 619, 171 A.L.R. 699; Riley v. Dun & Bradstreet, 6 Cir., 172 F.2d 303; De Husson v. Hearst Corp., 7 Cir., 204 F.2d 234; Garcia v. Hilton Hotels International, D.C., 97 F.Supp. 5, 8; Rosenberg v. J. C. Penney Co., 30 Cal.App.2d 609, 86 P.2d 696.
The judgment appealed from is reversed, except as above stated, and the cause is remanded to the district court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. The costs on this appeal should be assessed equally but not jointly (one-half to each) against appel-lees White and Enterprise Publishing Company.
Affirmed in part and reversed in part.

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

Answer: 2