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:
CORCORAN v. COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM, Inc., et al.
No. 9664.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
June 30, 1941.
Blase A. Bonpane, of Hollywood, Cal., for appellant.
Frederick Leuschner and Richard Harper Graham, both of Los Angeles, Cal., for appellee Montgomery Ward & Co.
Before DENMAN, MATHEWS, and HEALY, Circuit Judges.
HEALY, Circuit Judge.
The appeal is from a judgment awarding attorneys’ fees in a suit for infringement of copyright, the allowance being made under the claimed authority of § 40 of the Copyright Act (Act of March 4, 1909, c. 320, 35 Stats. 1084, 17 U.S.C.A. § 40), providing that the court “may award to the prevailing party a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.”
Appellant was the plaintiff below. The defendants (appellees) filed a motion to dismiss and “for a further and better statement of particulars.” In effect the motion to dismiss was denied, but the application for a more particular statement was granted with leave to appellant to amend within a stated time. Appellant did not amend, and within the time specified he moved for a voluntary dismissal. The court ordered “that the motion of the plaintiff to dismiss be granted with allowance of costs to the defendants and such attorneys’ fees as may be hereafter awarded”, and the matter of attorney’s fees was ordered reserved until after the trial or dismissal of a companion infringement suit in which appellant was plaintiff. The latter case terminated in a dismissal and was the subject of an independent appeal. Corcoran v. Montgomery Ward & Co. et al., 9 Cir., 121 F.2d 572, decided June 28, 1941.
Following the dismissal in the suit just mentioned, the court turned its attention to the matter of attorneys’ fees in the present suit. Concluding that the suit had been filed “without justification, either in law or in fact”, the court awarded each of the defendants an attorney’s fee of $400. The appeal followed.
Appellant claims that in view of his voluntary dismissal without prejudice, appellees were not “the prevailing party” within the meaning of the statute; hence the court lacked power to make an áward of attorneys’ fees. We think this is too narrow an interpretation of the statute. The authority given is not in terms limited to the allowance of fees to a party who prevails only after a trial on the merits. Where, as here, a defendant has been put to the expense of making an appearance and of obtaining an order for the clarification of the complaint, and the plaintiff then voluntarily dismisses without amending his pleading, the party sued is the prevailing party within the spirit and intent of the statute even though he may, at the whim of the plaintiff, again be sued on the same cause of action. Compare Marks v. Leo Feist, Inc., 2 Cir., 8 F.2d 460; Cohan v. Richmond, 2 Cir., 86 F.2d 680.
Appellant says that since the work done by counsel for appellees in the present case would have been done in any event in the companion case, the allowance of fees in this instance was an abuse of discretion. In the other suit referred to a motion for the allowance of counsel fees was denied, the court observing that that action “was filed in good faith and that defendant’s motion to dismiss was sustained upon a question of law not heretofore passed upon in the reported decisions.” Corcoran v. Montgomery Ward & Co., D.C., 32 F.Supp 422.
Each case involved the claimed infringement of the same allegedly copyrighted work, so that much of the work done by appellees’ counsel in the present case was no doubt of help to them in the defense of the other suit. There was, however, a substantial difference in the cases in respect of the allegations claimed to show the existence of a valid copyright. Without discussing the difference, it is enough to say that probably some investigation was necessary in the present case which the other did not entail. And aside from these considerations counsel necessarily expended some time and effort merely in appearing and resisting the suit prior to its voluntary dismissal.
An allowance of attorneys’ fees was within the sound discretion of the trial court and we think there was no abuse of discretion.
Affirmed.
The other case was said to be a consolidation of two cases.

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

Choices:

Answer: 0