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:
CLIFT & GOODRICH, Inc., v. UNITED STATES.
No. 275.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
March 14, 1932.
White & Case, of New York City (Arnold J. Brock, of New York City, of counsel), for appellant.
George Z. Medalie, U. S. Atty., of New York City (Leon E. Spencer, Asst. U. S. Atty., of New York City, of counsel), for appellee.
Before L. HAND, SWAN, and AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judges.
L. HAND, Circuit Judge.
The petitioner was a corporation, the successor to a firm of the same name; it was organized on April 1, 1919, and took over the firm property on May twenty-fourth of that year in exchange for preferred stock issued to the partners. These had already on January eighth filed individual income tax returns for their shares in the firm income for the year 1918, and a firm return for excess profits tax, and they paid the amounts returned on January twenty-second. On August fifteenth, the petitioner filed an excess profit and income tax return of the firm income for the year 1918) which was calculated as though it had been a corporation, as partners were allowed to do under section 330 of the Revenue Act of 1918 (40 Stat. 1094). The amount so shown the petitioner paid in three installments during 1919, after unsuccessful efforts to secure a set-off of the sums paid by the partners in January. On January 2, 1920, the Commissioner assessed against the petitioner the sum returned and paid, and later a deficiency which he after-wards abated on' the ground that only the firm, and not the corporation, could be taxed. The sums paid by the partners were later refunded, but the petitioner’s application for refund was refused, and this suit followed. All that is alleged regarding the relations between the petitioner and the partners as to the payment is as follows: “Each of said payments” (the three installments) “was charged on the books of the corporation to the tax account of the corporation, and not at that time, nor at any other time, charged either against the partnership or the individual members thereof.” The return of August 15, 1919, was made in the name of “Clift & Goodrich, (Partnership)”; two of the schedules carried the same caption; the others, the name “Clift & Goodrich,” not “Clift & Goodrich, Inc.,” the corporation’s title. The verification was by the president and treasurer of the corporation, who were two of the partners.
Section 330 of the Revenue Act of 1918 (40 Stat. 1094) allowed partners, whose business had been taken over by a corporation organized before July 1, 1919, in circumstances here existing, to file their return for 1918 as though they were a corporation, treating distribution made during the year as dividends, and not subjecting undistributed profits to surtaxes. This made a difference of some $37,000, by which the partners have profited, even assuming that they bore the same proportion of the tax here in question as shareholders that they would have borne as partners. The suit is based upon the theory that, as the Treasury officials treated the tax as that of the corporation without warrant of law, they have collected money which was really not due, since the partners should have paid it under a return made in accordance with section 330. If successful, the result will be that the partners will pay no taxes whatever for the year 1918. The judge dismissed the petition as demurrable and the petitioner appealed.
Any recovery must rest upon quasi contract, an implied promise to repay, raised ex aequo et bono because it was unconscionable for the respondent to keep the money. Cary v. Curtis, 3 How. 236, 11 L. Ed. 576; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Anderson, 263 F. 527 (C. C. A. 2). Had the petition alleged that the petitioner paid the tax under the mistaken belief that it was liable, the suit might perhaps succeed (Mayer v. Mayor, etc., of New York, 63 N. Y. 455; Betz v. City of New York, 119 App. Div. 91, 103 N. Y. S. 886, affirmed 193 N. Y. 625, 86 N. E. 1122), though even then there would be obstacles, for the old notion that a mistake of law will not serve in such a situation still prolongs its discreditable life; and it is moreover at least open to doubt whether there would not be a defence, if when the petition was filed, the period had already expired within which the partners could be assessed. But with these questions we need not concern ourselves, because the petition does not even intimate that the petitioner paid the tax under a mistaken belief that it was liable as a taxpayer. Indeed, it was not in existence during 1918, and it is entirely dear from the return itself that it. was acting for the partners. The payment was no more therefore than a gratuitous discharge of the obligor’s duty, and on what theory it can be recovered if that duty existed, we cannot conceive. The tax was certainly due from the partnersi and the Treasury had the right to keep the money, unless it. was inequitable to do so because it came from the corporation. An obligee is surely not bound in good conscience to repay such collections.
Besides, it sufficiently appears that the corporation had recourse over against the partners. Two of them made the return as officers of the petitioner; they at least were liable. As to the rest they procured refunds of what they had paid on January 22, 1919, because of the payment here in question, and that established an implied promise to reimburse the corporation, which they had no right to exploit. This is not affected by the allegation that they had never been charged with the tax on the corporate books. The right existed, and might well have been released by common consent, if the partners were the only shareholders. What they would receive as former partners would come out of their dividends as shareholders. Moreover, the whole issue is in any ease irrelevant, for it was not material to the Treasury’s right to retain the payment that the petitioner should, have indemnity.
The officials apparently supposed for a season that the corporation owed the tax, though they later receded from that position. No estoppel arises from this; it does not impugn the right of the Treasury to retain the money that its officers misconceived its basis, or their own powers. Had they coerced the payment, more might have been said, but all the instalments were paid before assessment. Nor does it make a difference that they were not made until the Treasury had refused to accept the partners’ payments of January in substitution for that due under the return. The petitioner was still not obliged to pay the tax; when it did so, it was either a mere interloper, or acting for the partners.
We do not forget that under section 156 of title 26, U. S. Code (26 USCA § 156), taxes may be recovered though not paid under duress. The section does not mean to enlarge the Treasury’s liability when the payment is not only voluntary, but made with full knowledge of the facts. It leaves open for determination whether under principles applicable in general to such suits, there is any basis for the recovery; and since it would be wholly unwarranted to rescind sueh a transaction merely because one party pays another’s tax actually due, with full knowledge of what he is doing, the section is pro tanto irrelevant.
Judgment 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