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:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Travis Dee PLUNK, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 71-1421.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Feb. 25, 1972.
H. T. Etheridge, Jr., Jackson, Tenn. (Court-appointed), on brief, for defendant-appellant.
Robert F. Colvin, Memphis, Tenn., for plaintiff-appellee; Thomas F. Turley, Jr., U. S. Atty., Larry E. Parrish, David C. Porteous, Asst. U. S. Attys., Memphis, Tenn., on brief.
Before EDWARDS and CELE-BREZZE, Circuit Judges, and KEITH, District Judge.
Honorable Damon J. Keith, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, sitting by designation.
PER CURIAM.
Appellant appeals from conviction for possessing and operating a still, in violation of 26 U.S.C. §§ 5601(a) (1) and 5601(a) (4) (1970).
On appeal appellant presents only one issue, namely, whether or not the District Court erred in allowing government witnesses to testify to initials which they had placed on a propane gas tank and on a tractor at the time they had seen these objects in the vicinity of a still which they had under surveillance. Subsequent to surveillances, government agents had secured an arrest warrant for defendant and a search warrant for his home. At trial, however, it was noted that the affidavit for the search warrant was dated March 20, 1970, whereas the warrant was actually procured and issued and dated March 12, 1970. On the basis of this error, the District Judge held the search warrant to be invalid, but he received in evidence an agent’s identification of his initials on the gas tank and the tractor as of the time of the arrest of defendant, when these objects were in defendant’s yard on the theory that the testimony was derived from “plain view.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 468-473, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).
Our review of this record indicates that there was more than sufficient evidence, totally unrelated to any search, for the jury to convict appellant of possessing and operating the still in question.
Further, the agent’s testimony concerning the tractor and its prior use in the operation of the still, and the propane gas tank and its prior use in relation to the still, and the fact that both were indeed in plain view in defendant’s yard was all obviously admissible.
Although no government appeal is brought to us from the District Court’s invalidation of the search warrant, we observe that nothing in this record indicates any possibility of prejudice arising from the error in dating of the affidavit for the search warrant, nor (in the absence of briefing on this point) is there any explanation tendered for it except typographical error. Under these circumstances normally we would be inclined to apply the “commonsense and realistic” rule of United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108, 85 S.Ct. 741, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965).
Since, however, this issue is not brought to us, we examine the record with the assumption that the search warrant was invalid and find real difficulty in holding that the agent’s testimony concerning the existence of the initials on the gas tank and the tractor at the time he examined both in defendant’s yard, could be justified under the “plain view” theory. In one instance he had to move the equipment; in the other instance he had to look underneath the tractor.
We are convinced, however, that on the total facts of this case, the admission of the testimony pertaining to the existence of the initials on the pieces of equipment (which were already identified as being in defendant’s yard after they had been seen at the site of the still operation) was only a small bit of cumulative evidence of guilt. On this whole record we can say beyond reasonable doubt that if the admission of this evidence was error, it was harmless. Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a); Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L. Ed.2d 705 (1967).
The judgment of the District Court is affirmed.

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