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:
NORTHWOOD APARTMENTS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Max LaVALLEY, Thomas Sommerville and City of Royal Oak, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 79-1536.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Decided March 16, 1982.
Thomas J. Beale, Hyman, Gurwin, Nachman, Friedman & Winkelman, Southfield, Mich., for plaintiff-appellant.
Milton Lucow, Rosalind Rochkind, Garan, Lucow, Miller, Lehman, Seward & Cooper, Detroit, Mich., Terrance H. Brennan, Daniel Sawicki, Royal Oak, Mich., for defendantsappellees.
Before MERRITT and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge.
PER CURIAM.
This is an action seeking money damages filed in the Eastern District of Michigan by Northwood Apartments pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985. Northwood, a co-partnership that owned an apartment building in Royal Oak, Michigan, alleged that the defendants had denied it federal due process and its equal protection right to free access to the courts in assessing the apartment for real estate taxes. The district court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss on the ground that it did not have subject matter jurisdiction because the action was barred by the Tax Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1341, or on the ground that it must abstain for reasons of comity.
On Northwood’s appeal, this court reversed and remanded to the district court, holding that the Tax Injunction Act was not a bar and that there was no legal basis to abstain. Northwood Apartments v. Max LaValley et a1, 649 F.2d 401 (6th Cir. 1981).
On petition for certiorari, the Supreme Court, by order entered December 14, 1981, vacated the judgment of this court and remanded “for further consideration in the light of Fair Assessment in Real Estate Association, Inc. v. McNary, 454 U.S. ---, 102 S.Ct. 177, 70 L.Ed.2d 271 (1981).”
In McNary the issue was, as stated by the Court, “[wjhether a damages action may be brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to redress the allegedly unconstitutional administration of a state tax system.” At ---, at 178. The Court held that it was unnecessary to decide whether the Tax Injunction Act presented a bar to the damage action since in any event, under principles of comity, abstention is required.
It therefore appears that this court erred in holding that abstention is improper and in reversing the district court for dismissing on that basis.
Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of this court reversing the judgment of the district court be and the same is hereby vacated.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

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: 1