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 "natural persons". 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:
Albert D. JOHNSON, Appellant, v. C.F. ASHBY, M.D., and J.E. Stitcher, M.D., Appellees.
No. 86-1214.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted Oct. 17, 1986.
Decided Jan. 7, 1987.
James R. Welsh, Omaha, Neb., for appellant.
Robert T. Grimit and James A. Snowden, Lincoln, Neb., for appellees.
Before McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge, HENLEY, Senior Circuit Judge, and ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
This medical-malpractice diversity action, brought by plaintiff Albert Johnson in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, comes to us on appeal from a judgment entered on a jury verdict for the defendants, Drs. C.F. Ashby and J.E. Stitcher. Johnson argues that the District Court abused its discretion and denied his right to a fair trial by imposing in advance of trial a strict time limit on the presentation of evidence. Because Johnson made no timely objection to the District Court’s time limitation, we affirm.
I.
Johnson’s complaint, filed May 18, 1984, alleged that he had come under the care of defendants Ashby and Stitcher on October 10, 1982, when he was admitted to the Fillmore County Hospital in Geneva, Nebraska, suffering from an abdominal injury, and that he had remained under their care until October 16, 1982, when he transferred to another hospital. Johnson alleged that the defendants had negligently failed to provide an immediate medical evaluation of his condition, failed to provide adequate and timely medical treatment, failed to perform exploratory surgery, and failed to refer the plaintiff to an appropriate medical specialist.
At a pretrial conference on August 28, 1985, the parties informed the District Court that they believed the trial would take five to seven days, and that it would most likely take six days. On November 19, 1985, a magistrate entered an order scheduling jury selection for December 2, 1985, and setting the case for a six-day trial beginning on Friday, December 13, 1985. Jury selection took place as scheduled.
Then, on December 13, immediately before trial was to begin, counsel for all the parties met with the District Court in chambers. This conference was not recorded; instead, the only knowledge we have from the record of what transpired in this December 13 conference comes from a later, on-the-record discussion between the Court and counsel that occurred on December 20, just after a conference on jury instructions. See Tr. 526-531. Apparently, at the December 13 conference the Court informed counsel that because the days following the six reserved for trial were filled with other trials, it wished to ensure that the case would actually be completed in six days. The Court proposed to establish an hourly time limit; under this plan, each side would be allotted roughly half the hours available for trial to divide as it wished between its opening statement, direct and cross-examination, and closing argument, and the clerk would keep track of the time expended by each side.
When Johnson’s counsel objected to this plan, someone suggested as an alternative that Johnson be given the first three days of trial, December 13, 16, and 17, to present his case, that the defendants be given the next two days, December 18 and 19, and two hours on the last day, December 20, to present their case, and that the remainder of the last day be reserved for closing arguments and jury deliberations. Johnson’s counsel informed the Court that he did not expect one of his witnesses until December 18, and that he thought he would take until noon of that day to complete his case; nonetheless, he did not object when the Court determined to adopt this second plan. After the conference, the Court entered an order that, inter alia, incorporated this second plan for time limitations, and added that normal trial hours might be slightly enlarged when possible to accommodate witnesses and counsel.
. After the December 13 conference ended, trial began. On each of the three days allotted for the presentation of his case, Johnson was granted additional time. The defendants completed cross-examination of the final witness Johnson presented early in the morning on December 18. At this point, Johnson simply rested his case, making no objection or motion aimed at extending his time so that he might present further evidence, no attempt to introduce further evidence, and, accordingly, no offer of proof as to what further evidence he wished to present.
At the close of all the evidence, in the December 20 conference discussed above, Johnson’s counsel for the first time argued that the time limit had improperly prevented him from presenting evidence. In particular, Johnson’s attorney contended that he had been forced to forego examining his second expert witness, Dr. Bralliar, on the issue of liability, restricting his examination to the issue of damages, and that he had been precluded from presenting the testimony of a third expert witness, Dr. Mark Smith, the witness whom he had told the Court, in the December 13 conference, he did not expect until December 18. Johnson’s attorney conceded that he had made no objection in this regard before the close of the evidence, but suggested that such an objection would have been futile. In response, the Court acknowledged that in the face of such an objection it would still have imposed “some kind” of time limit on the plaintiff. Johnson’s counsel did not attempt to introduce the evidence at this point as rebuttal testimony, or even suggest that he would be able to do so; he also made no motion for mistrial in this conference, contenting himself instead with simply having made the arguments noted above. After this conference, the attorneys delivered their closing arguments and the case was submitted to the jury, which later returned a verdict in the defendants’ favor.
After trial, Johnson moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or, in the alternative, for a new trial, based principally upon the time limitation on the presentation of his case. The Court denied this motion, and Johnson appealed.
II.
Trial courts have discretion to place reasonable limits on the presentation of evidence to prevent undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence. See Fed.R.Evid. 403, 611; MCI Communications Corp. v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 708 F.2d 1081, 1171 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 891, 104 S.Ct. 234, 78 L.Ed.2d 226 (1983); United States v. Article of Drug Consisting of 572 Boxes, More or Less, 415 F.2d 390, 392 (5th Cir.1969). “[I]n this era of crowded district court dockets federal district court judges not only may but must exercise strict control over the length of trials.” Flaminio v. Honda Motor Co., Ltd., 733 F.2d 463, 473 (7th Cir.1984). Nonetheless, it may be an abuse of the trial court’s discretion to exclude probative, non-cumulative evidence simply because its introduction will cause delay, and any time limits formulated in advance of trial must be fashioned with this in mind. Such limits should be “sufficiently flexible to accommodate adjustment if it appears during trial that the court’s initial assessment was too restrictive.” MCI, 708 F.2d at 1171 (footnote omitted).
Accordingly, we join the Seventh Circuit in disapproving rigid hour limits such as those initially suggested here. See Flaminio, 733 F.2d at 473 (disapproving a rigid hour limitation involving a time-keeping method “almost as complicated as in a professional football game.”) We further think that limits like those ultimately adopted by the District Court, if too strictly adhered to, would also be improper.
Here, however, Johnson sacrificed any challenge he might have made to the District Court’s time limits by failing to make a timely objection to those limits and an offer of proof as to the evidence he was unable to introduce. See Fed.R.Evid. 103(a); Flaminio, 733 F.2d at 473. See also Molever v. Levenson, 539 F.2d 996, 1003 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1024, 97 S.Ct. 643, 50 L.Ed.2d 625 (1976). Because Johnson lodged no objection to the time limits until after the close of the evidence, and never attempted to introduce the evidence, it is far from clear that the District Court would have refused to grant more time and excluded the evidence; we know only that the Court would have maintained “some kind” of time limit on the plaintiff’s case. While a party may believe that it would be futile, so far as the trial court is concerned, to make an objection, and that the objection may irritate the Court, it is still incumbent upon the party to make the objection in order to preserve the issue for appeal.
Affirmed.
. The Hon. Warren K. Urbom, United States District Judge for the District of Nebraska.
. The Fillmore County Hospital was named a defendant in Johnson’s complaint but was dismissed before trial.
. Of course, even where there has been no timely objection, we may still review for "plain error.” Rogers v. Rulo, 712 F.2d 363, 367-68 (8th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1046, 104 S.Ct. 719, 79 L.Ed.2d 181 (1984). But this is not an ‘“exceptional case”' involving a “‘miscarriage of justice’” meriting reversal on plain-error grounds. Id. at 368, quoting Johnson v. Houser, 704 F.2d 1049, 1051-52 (8th Cir.1983) (per curiam). The use of the plain-error exception to the normal rules of appellate practice must be confined to the most compelling cases, especially in civil, as opposed to criminal, litigation.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1