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.

Opinion:
MUNICIPAL ELECTRIC ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS et al., Petitioners, v. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Respondent, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp., Intervenor. MUNICIPAL ELECTRIC ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS et al., Petitioners, v. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Respondent, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co., Intervenor.
Nos. 22079, 22080.
United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued Sept. 8, 1969.
Decided Nov. 13, 1969.
Mr. George Spiegel, with whom Messrs. Worth Rowley and John C. Scott, Washington, D. C., on the brief, for petitioners.
Mr. Philip A. Loomis, Jr., General Counsel, Securities and Exchange Commission, with whom Messrs. David Ferber, Solicitor, and Aaron Levy, Associate Director, Division of Corporate Regulation, Securities and Exchange Commission, were on the brief, for respondent. Mr. Walter P. North, Associate General Counsel, and Mrs. Janet G. Gamer, Attorney, Securities and Exchange Commission, at the time the record was filed, also entered appearances for respondent.
Mr. George H. Lewald, South Hanover, Mass., of the bar of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, pro hac vice, by special leave of court, for intervenors. Mr. Jerome Ackerman, Washington, D. C., also entered an appearance for in-tervenors.
Before FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge, and McGOWAN and TAMM, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Petitioners Municipal Electric Association of Massachusetts, and others, now referred to as Municipals are the same parties who sought review in this court of orders of the Securities and Exchange Commission, approving the issuance by the Yankees of stock to their sponsors. In Municipal Elec. Ass’n of Mass. v. Securities and Exchange Comm’n., 134 U.S.App.D.C.-, 413 F.2d 1052 (1969), decided on March 26, 1969, we set aside the orders and remanded the cases to the Commission.
Municipals’ present petitions challenge the Commission’s orders permitting, under Section 6(b) of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, in the case of Vermont Yankee, and under Section 7 of the Act in the case of Maine Yankee, the issuance and sale of promissory notes to banking institutions to raise funds needed for interim financing of the construction of the respective power projects. Municipals contend that the interest of the public, investors, and consumers mentioned in the sections referred to, which the Commission must consider in authorizing financing through the notes, includes antitrust factors, as in the case of stock acquisitions, and that the Commission erroneously denied to Municipals an evidentiary hearing on its anticompetitive allegations with respect to the financing.
Any antitrust considerations included in the public, investor and consumer interest referred to in Sections 6 and 7 of the Act, we think in all the circumstances of the present petitions might well be resolved under the terms of our remand of March 26, 1969, in Municipal Elec. Ass’n of Mass. v. Securities and Exchange Comm’n, supra. In so concluding we observe that we do not have before us the question whether the action of the Commission, of which we have been advised, in reinstating its approval of the stock acquisitions, subject to conditions to be determined, fully satisfies our March 26 decision and remand.
We accordingly deny the present petitions without prejudice to such right of review as might be appropriate with respect to further orders of the Commission in these matters.
It is so ordered.
. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation and Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company.
. Nos. 21707, 21822, and 21927 in this court.
. 15 U.S.C. § 79 et seq.
. Vermont Yankee proposed to issue and sell $20,000,000 in promissory notes; Maine Yankee proposed a similar transaction of $30,000,000.

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.

Choices:

Answer: 99