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:
PAUL L. DODDS COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. HARRY LISS & ASSOCIATES, INC., et al., Appellees. HARRY LISS & ASSOCIATES, INC., et al., Cross-Appellants, v. PAUL L. DODDS COMPANY, Cross-Appellee.
Nos. 21360, 21360A.
United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.
Oct. 2, 1967.
Jack E. Hursh, Mellin, Hanseom & Hursh, San Francisco, Cal., for appellant and cross-appellee.
Robert D. Hornbaker, Mahoney, Halbert & Hornbaker, Santa Monica, Cal., for appellee and cross-appellant.
Before BROWNING and ELY, Circuit Judges, and BELLONI, District Judge.
PER CURIAM:
The district court held that claim 5 of Dodds Patent No. 3,003,730 was valid, but that it was not infringed by the Liss device. Both sides have appealed.
Claim 5 of the Dodds patent discloses a cantilever counter stool used in restaurants and like installations. All elements of the patented device are found in Dodds 2400 Cantilever Stool (an unpatented stool admittedly in the public domain when the patent in suit was applied for), except that the patented stool is made adjustable by telescoping the seat support tube into a separate base support tube and inserting a locking device.
Making a known device adjustable rarely involves invention, since adjustability and the means to accomplish it are elements of ordinary mechanical knowledge and skill in virtually every art. See Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America v. United States, 320 U.S. 1, 63 S.Ct. 1393, 87 L.Ed. 1731 (1943); Koochook Co. v. Barrett, 158 F.2d 463, 466 (8th Cir. 1946). It was so in the present case. Prior art Blayney Patent No. 1,254,969 and Straith Patent No. 1,337,103 disclose seats adjustable with respect to a table. Dean Patent No. 612,489, Marty Patent No. 624,232, Schwartz Patent No. 1,379,784, and Tveten Patent No. '2,275,330 accomplished adjustability by the télescoping of metal tubes. The locking device employed in the patent in suit is disclosed in Schwartz Patent No. 1,379,784, Tveten Patent No. 2,275,330, Noble Patent No. 2,816,769, and French Patent No. 879,-842.
We are satisfied that the patented combination would have been obvious to a mechanic of reasonable skill having knowledge of Dodds 2400 Cantilever Stool and the prior art patents referred to. The device disclosed in claim 5 of Dodds Patent No. 3,003,730 fails to meet the requirement of section 103, and the claim is therefore invalid.
Reversed.

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