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:
Calvin CHATMAN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
No. 77-1204.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted May 26, 1977.
Decided June 6, 1977.
Joel Case, Manchester, Mo., filed brief, for appellant.
Barry A. Short, U. S. Atty. and Richard D. Billeaud, Asst. U. S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., filed brief, for appellee.
Before HEANEY, ROSS and WEBSTER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Calvin Chatman was indicted for falsely altering and forging a United States Treasury check, 18 U.S.C. § 495; uttering and publishing the check, 18 U.S.C. § 495; and possession of stolen mail matter, 18 U.S.C. § 1708. He was acquitted by a jury on the second count, uttering, and appeals his conviction on the other two counts, urging that: (1) the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict on Counts I and III; (2) the court erred in refusing the appellant’s expert witness instruction; and (3) he was entitled to a directed verdict on Count II because the government failed to state a prima facie case in its opening statement and to present a submissible case in chief. We affirm.
The bulk of the trial testimony was that of a United States Postal Service Document Analyst, who concluded that the handwriting on exemplars furnished by Chatman was the same as that on the forged endorsement. The payee testified that the check normally arrived close to the date of its date, in this case February 3, 1976. He further testified that his mail was forwarded to his new home, nearby Chatman’s, but not until “about a month” from January 6, 1976, the date he requested forwarding. A postman testified that the mail would have been forwarded at least by January 8, 1976. Chatman’s mailbox was close to that of the payee.
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 80, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942), cited with approval in Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 124, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974); United States v. Frazier, 545 F.2d 71, 74 (8th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1078, 97 S.Ct. 823, 50 L.Ed.2d 798 (1977), and accepting as established all reasonable inferences to support the jury’s verdict, United States v. Frazier, supra, we conclude that substantial evidence supported the convictions on Counts I and III.
The testimony of the handwriting expert, coupled with the jury’s independent examination of the handwriting exemplars and the check endorsement, may be sufficient in and of itself to support the conviction on Count I. United States v. Duck, 423 F.2d 1200 (4th Cir. 1970); United States v. Acosta, 369 F.2d 41 (4th Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 386 U.S. 921, 87 S.Ct. 886, 17 L.Ed.2d 792 (1967). In the present case, however, corroboration was provided by testimony showing that the payee’s mail was forwarded at approximately the time his check would normally have been delivered and would, therefore, have been easily accessible to the defendant.
Chatman’s second contention is that the instruction given on expert testimony was erroneous because, unlike his proposed instruction, it did not explicitly state that the jury could disregard the expert testimony entirely. Chatman’s counsel failed to state the ground for his objection to the refusal of his proposed instruction and, therefore, failed to preserve any error for review. Fed.R.Crim.P. 30; United States v. Eagan, 516 F.2d 1392, 1393 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 856, 96 S.Ct. 106, 46 L.Ed.2d 81 (1975); United States v. Johnson, 516 F.2d 209, 213 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 859, 96 S.Ct. 112, 46 L.Ed.2d 85 (1975). Moreover, the instruction does not constitute plain error under Fed.R. Crim.P. 52(b), since the difference between the given and the refused instruction is slight and the given instruction correctly states the law. United States v. Alexander, 526 F.2d 161, 164 (8th Cir. 1975); United States v. Burden, 497 F.2d 385, 387 (8th Cir. 1974).
We find no authority to support Chatman’s contention that he was entitled to dismissal of Count II because the government failed to state a prima facie case in its opening statement. Nor do we find the statement to be misleading or confusing. Any error in refusal to dismiss Count II after the government’s opening statement or to direct a verdict for Chatman on Count II at the conclusion of all the evidence was harmless in the light of the jury’s verdict of acquittal on that count. Chatman’s assertion of prejudice in that the jury used Count II in a trade-off or compromise is without merit. United States v. Cobb, 446 F.2d 1174, 1177 (2nd Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 984, 92 S.Ct. 451, 30 L.Ed.2d 369 (1971); cf. Lewis v. United States, 382 F.2d 232, 237 (8th Cir. 1967). We also note that the trial court instructed the jury to consider each count separately and not to let the verdict on one count influence the verdict on any other offense charged.
The judgment is affirmed.

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