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:
SAN MIGUEL, GONZALEZ & VALIENTE & CO. v. GUEVARA et al.
No. 4127.
Circuit Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
July 9, 1946.
F. Fornaris, Jr., of San Juan, Puerto Rico (E. Martinez Rivera and Luis Blanco Lugo, both of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on the brief), for appellant.
Charles R. Hartzell, Rafael C. Fernandez, and Daniel F. Kelley, all of San Juan, Puerto Rico, for appellees.
Before EDGERTON, MAHONEY and WOODBURY, Circuit Judges.
MAHONEY, Circuit Judge.
On December 9, 1931, defendants executed a promissory note payable to the Banco Territorial & Agrícola de Puerto Rico or order in the amount of $12,000 due January 15, 1932. The assets of the Bank, including the. note, were liquidated and ultimately assigned to the plaintiff. On March 10, 1943, the plaintiff sued for collection of this note in the District Court of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The District Court entered judgment for the plaintiff, finding that the note was a personal, not a mercantile, obligation, and hence, not barred by the statute of limitations.
The statute of limitations on a mercantile instrument is three years under the Code of Commerce while the period of limitations on a personal or civil obligation is fifteen years under the Civil Code of Puerto Rico.
The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico reversed the judgment of the District Court and determined that the instrument in question was a commercial obligation and that suit thereon was barred by the statute of limitations. The correctness of this conclusion is the principal question presented to us.
The plaintiff asserts that the Supreme Court’s ruling that a promissory note payable to order is presumptively a mercantile instrument was manifestly erroneous. This doctrine has been consistently followed by the Supreme Court for many years. The question is one of local law and we cannot say that the determination of the Supreme Court was inescapably wrong. Bonet v. Texas Co., 1940, 308 U.S. 463, 471, 60 S.Ct. 349, 84 L.Ed. 401.
The Supreme Court further held that the presumption was supported rather than rebutted by the evidence. The parties are in substantial agreement on the essential facts. The evidence showed that the note in question was given by the defendants for the purpose of consolidating several other obligations to the Bank. It had been the practice of the Bank to discount for one* of the defendants obligations owing him which arose from the sale of merchandise. The Bank would then credit his account accordingly and he would draw against that account. It is undisputed that the transactions which gave rise to these obligations which were discounted by the Bank were of a commercial nature, issued against persons to whom this defendant had sold merchandise. When these obligations which the Bank discounted for the defendant were not paid by the primary obligors, the defendant’s account was overdrawn and he would give the Bank a promissory note for the amount of overdrawal in satisfaction thereof. The note in question is a consolidation of instruments given by the defendant to the Bank on such occasions.
The real issue in this case is whether the commercial character of the obligations which that defendant assigned to the Bank carries over to the note which the defendants gave to the Bank in exchange therefor. It would seem that if the obligations when assigned to the Bank were commercial instruments as between the Bank and the assigning defendant, then the note of the defendants in substitution therefor would also be a commercial instrument. Thus the issue in the instant case may be resolved by a determination of whether the original obligations which the Bank discounted for the defendant were commercial instruments as between these two parties. That the original obligations admittedly grew out of a commercial transaction and that the credits to the defendant’s account were devoted to commercial transactions is strong evidence in support of the Supreme Court’s conclusion and in support of the presumption as to instruments payable to order. We do not believe that the Supreme Court was inescapably wrong when it decided that the commercial character of an instrument flows over from the original obligor and obligee to the assignee thereof and to an instrument given in lieu thereof by the assignor. DeCastro v. Board of Commissioners, 1944, 322 U.S. 451, 64 S.Ct. 1121, 88 L.Ed. 1384. The note in question cannot be treated as separate and distinct from the transactions which preceded it. The plaintiffs did not sustain the burden of showing that the transaction out of which this instrument arose was not a commercial one.
We find no merit in the other issues raised by the plaintiff.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico is affirmed.
Hernandez v. Muniz, 1906, 10 P.R.R. 16, 19 ; Rosaly v. Alvarado, 1911, 17 P.R.R. 100, 102; Roman v. Martinez, 1917, 25 P.R.R. 610, 613; Barros v. Padial, 1926, 35 P.R.R. 237, 240; Totti v. Fernandez, 1930, 40 P.R.R. 609, 613; Blondet v. Garau, 1935, 47 P.R.R. 820, 822; Banco de P. R. Liquidator v. Rodriguez, 1938, 53 P.R.R. 166, 170.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0