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.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

Opinion:
ALLISON v. UNITED STATES.
No. 12766.
United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.
Dec. 28, 1949.
Eugene M. Baynes, West Palm Beach, Fla., William S. Allison (in pro. se.), Atlanta, . Ga., for appellant.
Fred Botts, Asst, U. S. Atty., Miami, Fla., J. Ellis Mundy, U. S. Atty., Harvey H. Tisinger, Asst. U. S. Atty., Atlanta, Ga., for appellee.
Before HOLMES, WALLER, and SIBLEY, Circuit Judges.
WALLER, Circuit Judge.
The Petitioner was convicted of breaking and entering the United States Post Office at Fort Ogden, Florida. The trial Court imposed the maximum sentence of five years, but prdered sentence suspended and placed the Petitioner on probation for five years. The sentence provided that the probationary period would not begin until defendant was released or had executed the sentence that he was then serving. At the time of the sentence the Petitioner was serving a fifteen-year sentence in the Florida State Prison. The Petitioner returned to the Florida State Prison where he served until the fifteen-year sentence was declared void by the Florida Supreme Court. Allison v. Mayo, 158 Fla. 700, 29 So.2d 750. He was thereupon released from the Florida institution and began to undergo his Fed eral probation. Within five years front the date of his release by the State — but^ more than five years from imposition of the State sentence — he was adjudged [on June 2, 1948], to have violated the conditions of his probation and same was thereupon revoked and the original sen ■ tence ordered to be executed.
The Petitioner contends that the probationary period began on date of sentence [Feb. 19, 1943] and that the five-year probationary period had elapsed so as to render him immune to service of same. We think not.
The sentence imposed in the Federal Court was definite and certain. It stated that probation would begin upon his release from the Florida State Prison. It would continue thereafter for five years. He was released April 17, 1947, and it was within five years from that date that the violation occurred and the probation was revoked. From the record it is clearly ascertainable when the probation was to begin and equally clear that it was to end five years thereafter so that a revocation of probation within the term is in conformity to law.
Affirmed.
. Title 18, U.S.C.A. § 315 [now § 2115].
. There were two additional criminal cases then pending against Petitioner, on which he was sentenced to five years on each, which sentences were to run concurrently with the sentence here.
. The judgment and commitment, dated February 19, 1943, states:
“It Is Further Ordered, that execution of sentence herein is hereby suspended and you William Stafford Allison are placed on probation with the Probation Officer for the Tampa Division of this District for a period of Five (5) Tears which probationary period shall not begin until you are released or shall have executed the sentence you are now serving to report Five (5) years from such time under cne conditions outlined in tlie Court’s Order entered December 1, 1939, imposing standing conditions of probation and the Court' expressly reserves jurisdiction if the terms of this probation are violated.”

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?

Choices:
private business (including criminal enterprises)
private organization or association
federal government (including DC)
sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
government - level not ascertained
natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
miscellaneous
not ascertained

Answer: 2