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:
John G. LENINGER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GIBBS & HILL, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
Cal. No. 735, Docket 83-7749.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued Feb. 8, 1984.
Decided March 26, 1984.
Edward S. Patterson, Bardonia, N.Y. (Patterson & Villanova, P.C., Bardonia, N.Y., on the brief), for plaintiff-appellant.
Lawrence W. Pollack, New York City (Le Boeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, and John A. Rudy, New York City, of counsel), for defendant-appellee.
Before TIMBERS, VAN GRAAFEILAND and RE, Circuit Judges.
Chief Judge, U.S. Court of International Trade, sitting by designation.
VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judge:
This is an appeal from a summary judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Carter, J.) dismissing appellant Leninger’s complaint alleging unlawful discharge from employment. We reverse.
On May 7, 1981, Leninger and Gibbs & Hill, Inc. entered into a contract in which they agreed that Leninger would work in Taiwan as a Senior Design Engineer for G & H’s Taiwan subsidiary, Gibsin Engineers, Ltd., for a two-year period commencing May 11, 1981. Leninger resigned from his existing employment and moved with his family to Taiwan where he worked for Gibsin until April of 1982. On April 8, 1982, Leninger received written notice of his termination, effective April 30, 1982.
Paragrah 17 of appellant’s employment contract, which bears the heading “Termination”, contains two subparagraphs, “A” and “B”. Subparagraph A is entitled “For Cause or Resignation”, and sets forth in detail the “causes” which would justify the termination of appellant’s employment. These include such things as absenteeism, incompetence, intoxication, drug abuse, and insubordination. Appellee does not contend that Leninger was discharged for cause.
Subparagraph B, which is entitled “Completion of Work”, reads in pertinent part as follows:
G & H may terminate this agreement and your employment hereunder at any time for GIBSIN’s or G & H’s convenience or in the event that, in GIBSIN’s or G & H’s judgement, the work for which you were hired or assigned under this agreement has been completed, indefinitely suspended or terminated.
Appellee’s April 8, 1982 memo stated that appellant was being discharged for a “business reason, which results in a planned reduction in the number of G & H expatriates at GIBSIN.” It concluded with the request, “Will you please make such arrangements as necessary to complete the work you are currently assigned to.” Despite this specific language in the notice of discharge, both the Rule 3(g) statement and the affidavit of appellee’s vice president, submitted in support of appellee’s motion for summary judgment, stated that appellant’s employment was terminated because the work he was to perform had been completed.
On June 3, 1983, Leninger submitted an affidavit opposing appellee’s motion, in which he stated that he had been engaged in five engineering projects at the time of his termination, none of which had been completed as of the date of the affidavit. Leninger also swore that other American engineers continued to arrive in Taiwan and still were working on projects that appellee claimed had been completed a year before. Notwithstanding the obvious factual dispute thus created, the district court granted appellee’s summary judgment motion with the simple notation on the motion cover “So ordered.”
Our review of the district court’s judgment has been frustrated somewhat by the court’s failure to indicate its reasons for granting appellee’s motions. See Van Bourg, Allen, Weinberg & Roger v. NLRB, 656 F.2d 1356, 1357 (9th Cir.1981); Hanson v. Aetna Life & Casualty, 625 F.2d 573, 575-76 (5th Cir.1980). However, we are satisfied that the motion should not have been granted.
We find no merit whatever in appellee’s contention that Leninger’s “attempt” to create an issue of fact concerning the status of his work “is of no consequence” because the contract gave appellee the right to say that appellant’s work had been completed even if, in fact, the work had not been completed. In the first place, “completion of the work”, was not given as the reason for appellant’s discharge in the April 8, 1982 notice. In the second place, appellee’s argument overlooks the covenant of good faith and fair dealing that is implied in every contract. See Filner v. Shapiro, 633 F.2d 139, 143 (2d Cir.1980). Accepting, as we must, appellant’s allegations that his assigned work had not been completed and that appellee’s assertions to the contrary were made in bad faith and were completely false, the issues thus raised cannot be disregarded as “of no consequence.”
We also disagree with appellee’s contention that, as a matter of law, the phrase “[a]t any time for GIBSIN’s or G & H’s convenience” in subparagraph B gave appellee the unrestricted right to discharge appellant at any time it chose, with or without reason to do so. In interpreting contracts, New York courts understandably seek constructions that fairly and equitably impose mutuality of obligation, rather than interpretations that place one of the parties at the mercy of the other. Moran v. Standard Oil Co., 211 N.Y. 187, 195-96, 105 N.E. 217 (1914); Schoellkopf v. Coatsworth, 166 N.Y. 77, 84, 59 N.E. 710 (1901). In applying this canon of construction to an employment contract, one New York court aptly stated, “if this employment contract is to be read as one terminable at will, it may just as well never have been written.” Vogel v. Pathe Exchange, Inc., 234 A.D. 313, 317, 254 N.Y.S. 881 (1932).
If the contract in the instant case was to be terminable at the unfettered discretion of appellee, it made no sense for appellee to set forth in subparagraph A of paragraph 17 the numerous grounds warranting a discharge for cause. See Yazujian v. J. Rich Steers, Inc., 195 Misc. 694, 701, 89 N.Y.S.2d 551 (1949). Moreover, it would be deceptive or, at best, meaningless to include a clause permitting termination at will in a subparagraph headed “Completion of Work.”
For the reasons above expressed and in the light of the well-established rule that contractual ambiguities should be construed most strongly against the draftsman, Alland v. Consumers Credit Corp., 476 F.2d 951, 956-57 (2d Cir.1973), we conclude that the district court’s “So ordered” grant of appellee’s summary judgment motion was error.
The judgment of the district court is reversed, and the matter is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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: 0