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:
Codell Blease THOMAS and Elizabeth F. Thomas, Appellants, v. GENERAL ELECTRIC CREDIT CORPORATION, Appellee.
No. 84-2367.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Nov. 4, 1985.
Decided Jan. 2, 1986.
Brenda Reddix-Smalls, Carolina Regional Legal Services, Florence, S.C., for appellants.
E.N. Zeigler, Florence, S.C., for appellee.
Before RUSSELL and WIDENER, Circuit Judges and MICHAEL, United States District Judge for the Western District of Virginia, sitting by designation.
DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiffs/appellants Codell Blease Thomas and Elizabeth F. Thomas appeal from the district court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of defendant-appellee General Electric Credit Corporation (GECC). The Thomases sought declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and damages for alleged violations of the Truth-in-Lending Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1601-1693, and Regulation Z thereunder, 12 C.F.R. § 226.1 et seq. Appellants also alleged pendent claims. GECC pled res judicata, basing such plea on a prior judgment in an action between the parties in the State Court. An explication of the proceedings in the prior State action is necessary for an understanding of GECC’s defense.
Prior to the filing of this federal action, the defendant GECC had filed in State Court an action to recover of the Thomases on a “Consumer Credit Contract” executed by them. The payment of the obligation by the Thomases was secured by a lien or pledge of a mobile home and certain household goods, and by an alleged real estate mortgage. To that State action, the Thom-ases, as the defendants in the State action, filed an answer and counterclaim in which they set up both as an affirmative defense and as a counterclaim the invalidity, under the federal Truth-in-Lending Act, of the “Consumer Credit Installment Contract.” They also alleged that the real estate mortgage sued on was a forgery. The cause was referred to a Referee “for the purpose of taking the testimony and reporting [his] findings of fact and conclusions of law, with leave to report any special matters.” The Referee heard the case and filed his report. In that Report he held: “The testimony is bare of any facts that would show any violation of the truth in lending act, 15 U.S.C.A. section 1601 and Regulation Z____” He also found the security agreement to be “a valid negotiable instrument and a valid security interest in the mobile home and its contents.” However, he held the real estate mortgage had not been executed by the Thomases (plaintiffs in the federal action) and he recommended that “the real estate mortgage [be held] not enforceable” ... the demands in the defendants’ Counterclaim be denied ... that the mobile home and personal property covered by the security in interest be “sold according to law and the custom of this Court” and that the plaintiff GECC have judgment against the defendants. The defendants (plaintiffs here) did not except to the finding that there was no evidence of a violation of the Truth-in-Lending Act by the defendant GECC. The Report was duly confirmed and judgment entered and enforced.
Later, these plaintiffs filed in the State Court a motion to vacate the judgment theretofore entered in the State action against them under Section|15-27-130 Code of Laws of South Carolina (1976). The basis of their motion was “extrinsic fraud” on the part of GECC. The motion was heard before the Honorable J. Woodrow Lewis, retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, sitting as a special judge. Judge Lewis heard the testimony which amounted in large part, if not wholly, to a claimed violation of the federal Truth-in-Lending Act and a claim of perjury in the testimony during the trial of the state action asserting a violation of the Act. Judge Lewis denied the motion, stating the reasons for his decision in a formal order, grounds being that the plaintiffs’ claim if true, would have been “intrinsic fraud, not extrinsic fraud,” but finding no basis in the record for a finding of fraud of any kind. If the testimony had been considered, he found such evidence would have been irrelevant to the decision. Though they noticed an appeal from Judge Lewis’ decree, the plaintiffs never perfected their appeal and the appeal was duly dismissed.
We have reviewed in detail the proceedings in the State Court because the plaintiffs contended in argument they had never been accorded their day in the State Court on either their Truth-in-Lending claim or their motion to vacate judgment for alleged “extrinsic fraud.” The record is conclusive against both contentions. The defense of res judicata, as asserted by GECC, was thus amply demonstrated by the undisputed record and the district court properly dismissed the action on that ground. Accordingly, 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: 0