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:
MERCK & CO., INC., Appellant, v. Elmer B. STAATS, Comptroller, et al. MERCK & CO., INC. v. Elmer B. STAATS, Comptroller, et al., Appellants.
Nos. 79-1435, 79-1438.
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued Feb. 11, 1980.
Decided Sept. 10, 1981.
Ronald A. Stern, Washington, D. C., with whom Philip A. Lacovara, Washington, D. C., was on the brief for appellant in No. 79-1435 and cross-appellees in No. 79-1438.
Harland F. Leathers, Sp. Asst, to the Asst. Atty. Gen., Washington, D. C., with whom Carl S. Rauh, U. S. Atty. (at the time the brief was filed), Morton Hollander, Atty., Dept, of Justice, Washington, D. C., were on the brief for appellees in No. 79-1435 and cross-appellants in No. 79-1438.
Before TAMM, ROBB and MIKVA, Circuit Judges.
Opinion Per Curiam.
Opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part filed by Circuit Judge MIKVA.
PER CURIAM:
The issue in this ease is the scope of the authority of the Comptroller General to examine records of Merck & Company relating to four contracts, negotiated without advertising, for sale of pharmaceutical products to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. The right of the Comptroller to examine records is based on 10 U.S.C. § 2313(b) (1976) and 41 U.S.C. § 254(c) (1976), the latter of which requires that the following language appear in government contracts negotiated without advertising:
[T]he Comptroller General .. . shall ... have access to and the right to examine any directly pertinent books, documents, papers, and records of the contractor ... involving transactions related to [this contract]. . . .
Each of the Merck contracts contained such a provision. Relying upon it the Comptroller General requested access to Merck’s records directly pertinent to the pricing and cost of items furnished under each Merck contract. Merck denied the request and this litigation followed.
The District Court granted the Comptroller General access to “all books, documents, papers, or records directly pertaining to the pricing and cost of producing the items furnished by plaintiff Merck ...” under the contracts. However, the District Court enjoined the Comptroller from demanding access to “books, documents, papers, or records with respect to research and development, marketing and promotion, distribution, and administration ...” except as included in the prior grant. Both Merck and the government appeal.
On September 16,1980 Merck filed a conditional petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment. The petition was denied December 8, 1980, 449 U.S. 1038, 101 S.Ct. 618, 66 L.Ed.2d 501 (1980).
This is one of several related cases in various circuits, challenging demands by the Comptroller General to examine the records of pharmaceutical companies pursuant to the access-to-records statutes, 10 U.S.C. § 2313(b) and 41 U.S.C. § 254(c). See Staats v. Bristol Laboratories Division of Bristol-Myers Co., 428 F.Supp. 1388 (S.D.N. Y.1977), 620 F.2d 17 (2d Cir. 1980), aff’d by evenly divided court, 451 U.S. 400, 101 S.Ct. 2037, 68 L.Ed.2d 343 (1981); SmithKline Corp. v. Staats, 483 F.Supp. 712 (E.D. Pa.1980), appeal pending No. 80-1464 (3d Cir. Mar. 19, 1980), conditional petition for certiorari before judgment denied December 8, 1980, 449 U.S. 1038, 101 S.Ct. 619, 66 L.Ed.2d 502 (1980); Eli Lilly & Co. v. Staats, 574 F.2d 904 (7th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 959, 99 S.Ct. 362, 58 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978); United States v. Abbott Laboratories, 597 F.2d 672 (7th Cir. 1979); Cf. Hewlett-Packard Co. v. United States, 385 F.2d 1013 (9th Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 988, 88 S.Ct. 1184, 19 L.Ed.2d 1292 (1968).
The scope and meaning of the statutory access-to-records provision have been thoroughly considered in the decisions we have cited. Conflicts in those decisions must be resolved by the Supreme Court, not by us, and we believe that nothing would be gained by a replowing of the field. Accordingly, without more, we affirm the judgment of the District Court filed January 24, 1979, pursuant to the District Court’s memorandum opinion filed August 12, 1977.
So ordered.

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