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:
Elmer J. DRECKMAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Joe Maria FLORES, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 14336.
United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.
May 6, 1964.
Nat P. Ozmon, Edward J. Kelly, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant. Nat P. Ozmon, Chicago, Ill., of counsel.
Robert O. Duffy, Frank J. Pause, John M. Beverly, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellee. Beverly & Pause, of counsel.
Before DUFFY, CASTLE and SWYGERT, Circuit Judges.
DUFFY, Circuit Judge.
The complaint herein alleged negligence by defendant on September 9,1959, in driving his automobile in the village of Villa Park, Du Page County, Illinois. Defendant filed an answer and counterclaim. The jury found in favor of the defendant and also against the plaintiff on defendant’s counterclaim, assessing defendant’s damages at $1250. The trial court directed a remittitur of $800, which remittitur was accepted.
Plaintiff was driving an automobile in a southerly direction on Harvard Avenue near the intersection of Elm Street in the village of Villa Park. At the same time, defendant was operating an automobile in an easterly direction on Elm Street near its intersection with Harvard Avenue. The motor vehicles collided in the intersection. There were no stop lights or stop signs at this street crossing.
Appellant’s chief complaint on this appeal is that an instruction given by the trial court created an almost absolute right of way to the vehicle approaching and entering an intersection from the right. Furthermore, that the form of the instruction as given left the jury with the impression that violation of a statutory obligation was negligence per se rather than only prima, fade negligence to be considered along with other facts and circumstances in evidence.
The instruction criticized by appellant was substantially a verbatim recitation of Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions Form No. 70.02. The instruction, as given, appears in the footnote.
The Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions were published in 1961. On November 21, 1960, a letter signed by each of the justices of the Illinois Supreme Court was sent to the Chairman of the Committee which had drafted the proposed instructions. The members of the Court strongly commended the instructions as proposed but, of course, the Court could not and did not approve instructions to be given in any particular case. Apparently, the Illinois Supreme Court has not specifically passed on the question raised in the instant case.
The Illinois right of way statute which forms the foundation of the instruction reads as follows:
“The driver of a vehicle approaching an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to a vehicle which has entered the intersection from a different highway.
“When two vehicles enter an intersection from different highways at approximately the same time, the driver of the vehicle on the left shall yield the right-of-way to the vehicle on the right.” Ch. 95½, Sec. 165(a) and (b). (Ill.Rev.Stat.1959.)
Instructions to a jury must be considered as a whole and construed in the light of what an ordinary person would understand them to mean. Chicago Union Traction Co. v. Lowenrosen, 222 Ill. 506, 78 N.E. 813, 814; McKinney v. Illinois Power Company, 26 Ill.App.2d 193, 206, 167 N.E.2d 249, 255.
The Illinois Supreme Court has expressed its view in the following language : “ * * * The test, then, is not what meaning the ingenuity of counsel can at leisure attribute to the instructions, but how and in what sense, under the evidence before them and the circumstances of the trial, ordinary men acting as jurors will understand the instructions.” Reivitz v. Rapid Transit Co., 327 Ill. 207, 213, 158 N.E. 380, 382.
Some of the criticisms leveled by plaintiff’s counsel at the instructions given by the trial judge who has also had extensive experience in the state courts of Illinois, are of a hypercritical nature. We have carefully considered all of the arguments of plaintiff’s counsel, but we have reached the conclusion that no reversible error was committed by the trial court.
The judgment of the District Court is Affirmed.
. “At the time of the occurrence in question, there was in force in the State of Illinois a statute governing the operation of motor vehicles approaching intersections.
“If two vehicles are approaching an intersection from different highways at ■such relative distances from the intersection that if each is being driven at a reasonable speed, the vehicle on the right will enter the intersection first or both vehicles will enter the intersection at about the same time, then this statute requires the driver of the vehicle on the left to yield the right of way to the vehicle on the right.
“On the other hand, if two vehicles are approaching the intersection from different highways at such relative distances from the intersection that if each is being driven at a reasonable speed, the vehicle on the left will enter the intersection and pass beyond the line of travel of the vehicle on the right before the vehicle on the right enters the intersection, then this statute requires the driver of the vehicle on the right to yield the right of way to the vehicle on the left.
“The fact that a vehicle has the right of way does not relieve its driver from the duty to exercise ordinary care in approaching, entering and driving through the intersection.-’

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