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:
Herbert ROOM, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. CARIBE HILTON HOTEL, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 80-1607.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Argued June 1, 1981.
Decided Sept. 14, 1981.
Jose E. Fernandez Sein, Rio Piedras, P. R., with whom Harvey B. Nachman, Santucce, P. R., was on brief, for plaintiff, appellant.
Charles DeMier Leblanc, Hato Rey, P. R., with whom A. Miranda Cardenas, De Corral & Rodriguez, Old San Juan, P. R., was on brief, for defendant, appellee.
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, CAMPBELL and BREYER, Circuit Judges.
LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff Herbert Room commenced this diversity action to recover damages allegedly arising out of a heart attack he suffered on November 24, 1976, while a guest at defendant Caribe Hilton Hotel. At the close of plaintiff’s case-in-chief, the district court granted a directed verdict for defendant and plaintiff appeals. We affirm.
The facts as viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, see, e. g., Carlson v. American Safety Equipment Corp., 528 F.2d 384, 385 (1st Cir. 1976), are as follows. Herbert Room arrived in Puerto Rico on November 24, 1976 and registered as a guest at the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan. That evening, Room gambled at the hotel casino. As he was leaving the casino, he began to feel weak and returned to his room. Upon arriving there, he felt nauseous, and therefore called the hotel operator, after reading the following section in the hotel service directory:
A registered nurse is on duty, and a qualified physician is available at all times. Call doctor’s office for appointment 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Monday through Friday. After hours and Saturdays and Sundays, call: Telephone operator. Nurse will be glad to make dental appointments. Call: Ext. 1740.
This first call to the operator took place, according to Room, at 7:30 p. m. He requested a doctor, although he did not describe his symptoms, and testified that the operator told him she would get him one. At 11:30 p. m., he called the operator and again requested a doctor, again making no mention of his symptoms. The operator tried to call one of three doctors listed on a hotel roster as available to treat guests, but his line was busy. She then called Room, who told her to keep trying. Five or ten minutes later she tried again to call the doctor, but his line was still busy. She informed Room, who again asked her to keep trying. She tried to call the other doctors on the list, but was unable to make contact with any of them. Once again, she called Room, who again asked her to keep trying. At no time did she call the 24-hour emergency number of the San Jorge Hospital, although that number was also listed on her roster. Eventually, Room called some friends in Puerto Rico, who advised him to take a cab to the Presbyterian Hospital, which he did. They also called the hotel operator and informed her that she could stop trying to call the doctor.
Room arrived at the hospital at approximately 1:15 a. m. His condition was diagnosed as a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. He remained hospitalized for almost a month. In the course of that time, he suffered two more serious incidents involving his heart, acute cardiac failure on November 30, and paroxysmal tachycardia on December 8.
After being released from the hospital, Room returned to his home in New York and took a job as a converter in the textile industry. He quit approximately nine months later because he was unable to keep enough information in his head to do his job satisfactorily. He now suffers from a poor memory and head pains, complaints he never had before his heart attack.
Room sued the hotel, alleging that it had breached a duty under Puerto Rico law to provide him with adequate medical care by failing to put him in touch with a doctor from the time he first called the operator until he left for the hospital. Room alleged that this delay caused him permanent brain damage, and claimed $1 million in damages for hospital and medical expenses, loss of earnings, and pain and suffering. In directing a verdict for the defendant, the district court found, inter alia, that the delay in providing plaintiff with medical attention was not a proximate cause of his injuries.
Assuming arguendo that the defendant breached a duty to exercise reasonable care in providing medical care to its guests, the plaintiff must still establish a causal relation between the defendant’s negligence and the plaintiff’s injury. See, e. g., Portilla v. Carreras Schira, 95 P.R.R. 785, 793 (1968). In discussing this issue, it is necessary to distinguish the plaintiff’s permanent brain damage from any pain and mental anguish he may have suffered during the time when the defendant failed to provide him with a doctor. We shall address the permanent injuries first.
The plaintiff’s sole expert testimony concerning his medical condition was given by Dr. Jose Luis Freyre, a clinical neurologist. Dr. Freyre examined the plaintiff on November 1, 1978. He had no contact with plaintiff at any time prior to this; specifically, he did not treat plaintiff during his hospitalization in 1976.
Dr. Freyre testified as to plaintiff’s loss of some cerebral function, and testified further that the heart attack of November 24 could have caused this condition. On cross-examination, however, he admitted that the hospital’s records of plaintiff’s condition at the time of his admission were not complete enough to determine with any degree of certainty whether the November 24 attack did indeed cause any brain damage. In particular, the lack of any information as to plaintiff’s blood pressure at the time of admission made it impossible for Dr. Freyre to ascertain whether the attack had resulted in any significant decrease in blood flow to the brain.
Most significantly, Dr. Freyre was unable to determine which of the three heart-related incidents suffered by plaintiff caused the brain damage. The following colloquy took place between the court and Dr. Freyre:
THE COURT: [Cjould the second [heart failure] have been the cause of [plaintiff’s] condition?
THE WITNESS: It could have.
THE COURT: Is there any way of telling whether it was the second or the first?
THE WITNESS: No way of telling whether it was the first, second or third.
It is not disputed that the delay in rendering medical assistance on November 24 was not a cause of the two subsequent cardiac incidents. There was no evidence that the delay on November 24 was a more likely cause of plaintiff’s condition than were the other two incidents. In such a situation, any determination by the jury that the delay did cause the injury would be pure speculation and conjecture. Such speculation is not permitted. Widow of Delgado v. Boston Insurance Co., 99 P.R.R. 693, 702-04 (1971); W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts § 41, at 241 (4th ed. 1971). The directed verdict for defendant as to plaintiff’s permanent brain damage was therefore proper.
The evidence of any mental anguish that plaintiff may have suffered during the delay in obtaining medical treatment was also insufficient to overcome defendant’s motion for a directed verdict. Plaintiff’s sole evidence on this issue is as follows. He testified that during the time he was in the hotel room waiting for the operator to contact a doctor, he was weak and had few lucid moments. He said he had some pains in his back and arms, and that at one point they became very severe, at which time he felt that he was going to die.
There was, however, no evidence that the delay alone caused any pain or mental suffering. Defendant quite rightly points out that the heart attack itself — an event for which defendant was not responsible — would be accompanied by some pain, regardless of the speed with which help arrived. There was no attempt by plaintiff to show the extent to which prompt medical attention would have alleviated his pain, if at all. Given this failure even to attempt to apportion the damages between the delay and the heart attack, no reasonable jury could conclude that the delay alone caused any pain or mental suffering.
Similarly, the proof of mental anguish based on plaintiff’s fear that he was going to die was insufficient. Again, there is no evidence that he would not have feared for his life even after receiving medical attention. The fact that he suffered two more cardiac-related crises while in the hospital certainly suggests that he was not out of danger even after his hospitalization. Moreover, plaintiff did not describe how long he feared for his life or how great that fear was. Any attempt by the jury to assign a dollar value to this injury based on the testimony described above could only be the result of speculation and conjecture. While plaintiff’s testimony may amount to a scintilla of evidence that the delay caused him substantial mental anguish, that is not sufficient to overcome a motion for a directed verdict. See, e. g., Trinidad v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 575 F.2d 983, 985 (1st Cir. 1978).
Affirmed.
. In light of our decision on this issue, it is not necessary to reach the other grounds on which the district court rested its decision.
. We do not decide whether such a duty actually existed or whether it was breached in this case.
. Under Puerto Rico law, a plaintiff may recover damages for mental suffering, even without any physical injury being alleged or proven. See Compagnia Nationale Air France v. Castano, 358 F.2d 203 (1st Cir. 1966); Muriel v. Suazo, 72 P.R.R. 348 (1951); Rivera v. Rossi, 64 P.R.R. 683 (1945).
. Defendant is not, of course, responsible for that portion of the injury resulting solely from the heart attack. See generally W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts § 52, at 317-20.

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