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:
Winnie Ruth MOTTELER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. J. A. JONES CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 71-1156.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
June 28, 1971.
Norman E. Hay, Cannelton, Ind., Charles S. Gleason, Indianapolis, Ind., Gleason, Woods & Johnson, Indianapolis, Ind., Birchler & Hay, Cannelton, Ind., for plaintiff-appellant.
James V. Donadío, Indianapolis, Ind., for appellee.
Before SWYGERT, Chief Judge, and KILEY and FAIRCHILD, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
The plaintiff-appellant has petitioned for a rehearing en banc of the order entered April 22, 1971, in the above-entitled cause. No judge in active service has requested that a vote be taken on the suggestion for an en banc rehearing, and the petition for rehearing, insofar as it requested en banc consideration, is denied. However, on the basis of additional facts presented to it and for the reasons set forth below, the panel has concluded that the order entered April 22, 1971, dismissing the appeal in the above-entitled matter, must be vacated. The petition for rehearing is therefore granted and it is ordered that this appeal be reinstated.
On February 20, 1970, appellant filed a complaint which alleged admiralty or maritime claims. The district court granted summary judgment for appellee on October 26, 1970. Appellant filed her notice of appeal on January 15, 1971.
On April 22, 1971, we dismissed appellant’s appeal for her failure to comply with the requirement of Rule 4(a), Fed. R.App.P., that her notice of appeal be filed “within 30 days of the date of the entry of the judgment or order appealed from.” At that time, appellant relied, on 28 U.S.C. § 2107, which allows 90 days for filing the notice of appeal in admiralty matters. Our April 22, 1971, order corectly pointed out that under 28 U.S.C. § 2072, Rule 4(a), Fed.R.App.P., overrides such conflicting statutes.
However, appellant has now pointed out, for the first time, that she filed a “Motion to Reconsider” in the district court. Appellant argues that the filing of this motion terminated the running of the time within which she was required to file her notice of appeal. On November 5, 1970, within ten days of the entry of summary judgment against her, appellant filed a “Motion for Enlargement of Time to File Motion to Reconsider Judgment Entry.” On November 9, 1970, the district court granted this motion, extending to November 30 the time within which appellant could file her motion to reconsider. Appellant’s motion to reconsider was then filed within the time limits set by the district court. On January 12, 1971, the district court, sua sponte, denied the motion to reconsider as untimely filed.
We believe that appellant’s “Motion to Reconsider” was, in effect, a motion under Rule 59(e), Fed.R.Civ.P., to alter or amend judgment. See Pierre v. Jordan, 333 F.2d 951, 955 (9th Cir. 1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 974, 85 S.Ct. 664, 13 L.Ed.2d 565 (1965). Under Rule 4(a), Fed.R.App.P., the motion would, if timely filed, have terminated the running of the time for filing an appeal.
Appellee correctly points out that a motion under Rule 59(e) must be filed within ten days of the entry of judgment and that under Rule 6(b), Fed.R.Civ.P., the district court is powerless to extend the time within which such a motion may be filed. Appellee argues that the November 9, 1970, order enlarging the time within which the motion to reconsider could be filed was therefore a nullity and that the motion to reconsider was not “timely” as required by Rule 4(a), Fed. R.App.P., and could not terminate the running of the time for filing an appeal.
While a literal reading of the Federal Rules of Civil and Appellate Procedure would support the appellee’s position, the Supreme Court has refused to deny a litigant access to the court of appeals because of late filing of his notice of appeal where the late filing resulted from the litigant’s reliance on a district court’s erroneous grant of an extension of time within which to file a motion which, if properly filed, would terminate the running of the time for filing an appeal. The leading case is Thompson v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 875 U.S. 384, 84 S.Ct. 397, 11 L.Ed.2d 404 (1964), which reversed a decision of this court dismissing a late-filed appeal. There the district court had taken an untimely motion for new trial under advisement, had declared that the motion was made “in ample time,” and had subsequently denied the motion for a new trial after the time for filing an appeal from the initial decision had expired. The Supreme Court held that where a party files a post-judgment motion which, if timely filed, would postpone the deadline for his appeal, but files it too late under the applicable rule, his reliance on statements or actions of the district court indicating that his motion was timely filed will relieve him of the detrimental consequences that would otherwise result.
In Wolfsohn v. Hankin, 116 U.S.App.D.C. 127, 321 F.2d 393 (1963), rev’d, 376 U.S. 203, 84 S.Ct. 699, 11 L.Ed.2d 636 (1964), the court of appeals dismissed as untimely filed an appeal almost identical to the one before us. There the district court had entered an order extending the time within which the appellant could move for rehearing under Rule 59. In reliance on this extension of time, the appellant did not file his motion for rehearing within ten days and did not file his notice of appeal until after his motion for rehearing was denied, several months after the original judgment entry. The Supreme Court summarily reversed the court of appeals on the authority of Thompson, supra. See also Pierre v. Jordan, supra, Vine v. Beneficial Finance Co., 374 F.2d 627 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 970, 88 S.Ct. 463, 19 L.Ed.2d 460 (1967); and 9 J. Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 204.12 [2] (2d ed. 1970).
Our analysis of the foregoing authorities convinces us that appellant’s appeal should not have been dismissed. The district court erroneously extended the time within which appellant could file her motion to reconsider. The court took the motion under advisement and gave every indication that it intended to rule on the motion on its merits. After holding the motion until the time within which appellant might have appealed from the initial judgment had run, the court, sua sponte, dismissed the motion to reconsider as untimely filed. This is precisely the situation which the Supreme Court considered in Wolfsohn v. Hankin, supra, and that decision compels us to vacate our order dismissing this appeal as untimely filed.

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