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:
BOOSALIS v. CRAWFORD.
No. 6966.
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Decided July 18, 1938.
Harry T. Whelan, W. B. O’Connell and Wm. A. Gallagher, all of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
David A. Pine, U. S. Atty., John J. Wilson, Asst. U. S. Atty., Elwood H. Seal, Corp. Counsel, and Chester H. Gray, Asst. Corp. Counsel, for appellee.
Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and STEPHENS and EDGERTON, Associate Justices.
STEPHENS, Associate Justice.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia. The action was one in replevin brought by the appellant as owner of three “claw machines” seized by members of the Metropolitan Police Department, District of Columbia, and delivered to the appellee as Property Clerk of the Department. There was a trial to a jury. At the outset of the trial it was stipulated that the machines were the property of the appellant and that they were seized by the police; it was stipulated further that the case was to be a test case to determine the legality of the operation of claw machines in the District. As the case was tried below the only substantive issue raised was whether the machines were, within the meaning of the pertinent statutory provisions, gambling devices. As to the power of the police to seize and forfeit the machines if they are gambling devices, no question was raised below and none is raised on this appeal. Evidence was introduced by both parties. To the admission of certain of the evidence objection was made and exception taken. At the close of the case the appellee moved for a directed verdict and the motion was granted. Thereafter a motion for a new trial was made and denied, judgment for the appellee was entered, and this appeal was taken.
The basic question before us is whether the trial judge was justified in taking the case from the jury. A court may direct a verdict against a plaintiff if the evidence is such, giving the plaintiff the full effect of every legitimate inference, that no reasonable juryman could reach a verdict for him. Lyons v. Liberty Nat. Bank, 67 App. D.C. 14, 89 F.2d 486, 1937; Fleming v. Fisk, 66 App.D.C. 350, 87 F.2d 747, 1936; Speirs v. District of Columbia, 66 App.D. C. 194, 85 F.2d 693, 1936.
The pertinent statutory provisions are:
“Whoever shall in the District set up or keep any gaming table, or any house, vessel, or place, on land or water, for the purpose of gaming, or gambling device commonly called ABC, faro hank, E O, roulette, equality, keno, thimbles, or little joker, or any kind of gaming table or gambling device adapted, devised,, and designed for the purpose of playing any game of chance for money or property, or shall induce, entice, and permit any person to bet or play at or upon any such gaming table or gambling device, or on the side of or against the keeper thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.” [D.C.Code (1929) tit. 6, § 153]
“All games, devices, or contrivances at which money or any other thing shall he bet or wagered shall be deemed a gaming table within the meaning of sections 153, 154, and 155 of this title; and the courts shall construe said sections liberally, so as to prevent the mischief intended to be guarded against.” [D.C.Code (1929) tit. 6, § 156]
This court, in accordance with the Congressional injunction in the second paragraph, has construed the first one liberally. See Miller v. United States, 6 App.D.C. 6, 1895, and Swan v. United States, 54 App. D. C. 100, 295 F. 921, 1923, holding that accepting bets upon horse races is within the statute. We said:
“ ‘Any games, devices, or contrivances set up or kept for the purpose of gaming, or any gambling device, so set up and kept, adapted, devised and designed for the purpose of playing any game of chance for money or property, and to which the public may resort to bet or wager money, is a gaming table within the meaning of the statute. The definition of a gaming table under the statute does not involve the ordinary mechanical definition of a table, but depends for its statutory meaning upon the means or contrivances adopted for playing the game.’ ” [54 App.D.C. at page 102, 295 F. at page 923 ; 6 App.D.C. at page 12]
The claw machines involved in the instant case and illustrated in the accompanying cut taken from the record, consist, as shown by the evidence, of a miniature electric shovel or claw operating through a boom and mast set upon the forward portion of a miniature ship within a glass case. When in operation that portion of the case surrounding the ship is filled with candy to approximately the level of the top of the hull. Set upon the candy are items of merchandise such as kodaks, wrist watches, safety razors, clocks. Operation of such a machine, when carried on by a player according to the printed directions, is as follows: The player turns the locator-handle at the right center of the machine to the right or left with the effect of moving the boom and the claw so that the latter will be suspended at a point in the vicinity of a desired article. He then inserts a nickel in the aperture at the left center of the machine. This pauses an electric motor to commence operating and the following movements occur: first, the boom moves forward; second, the claw drops down, spreading as it touches an object; third, the claw returns upward, closing as it does so; fourth, the boom moves backward, carrying the claw to a position over a chute located in the prow of the ship; fifth, the claw drops and opens. If the claw descends upon an article it may grasp the same in its closing and upward movement and carry and deposit it in the chute. When this occurs, the player, by pulling out the receptacle in the center of the machine, obtains the article.
It would serve no useful purpose to detail the evidence introduced in respect of the question whether or not the machines operate as gambling devices. Suffice it to say that in respect of a player operating a machine according to directions, the evidence was uncontroverted that, except to the extent that he could, by turning the locator-handle, suspend the claw in the vicinity of a desired article, the operation of the machine was beyond his control. It was further uncontroverted that even if the claw, were suspended immediately over an article, “there are chances that the claw may not strike the article . . ., that if it does strike the article, it may not grip the article, or, having gripped the article, that it may slip off, without in any way moving the article, or that, if it does lift the article, the article may drop off before reaching the chute, or may be knocked off by some other articles in the way.” So it was put by the trial judge, and we think accurately. Under these circumstances, no reasonable juryman could reach a conclusion that these machines were not gambling devices within the meaning of the statute. Even giving -the appellant the benefit of an assumption that the evidence establishes that skill played a part in suspending the claw in the vicinity of a desired article, no other conclusiqn could reasonably be reached than that, on the whole of the operation of the machines according to directions, chance predominated over skill or was present in such manner as to thwart the exercise of skill. Under such facts, the device operates as a game of chance. See Commonwealth v. Plissner, Mass., 4 N.E.2d 241, 1936; Commonwealth v. Ward, 281 Mass. 119, 183 N.E. 271, 1932; People ex rel. Ellison v. Lavin, 179 N.Y. 164, 71 N.E. 753, 66 L.R.A. 601, 1 Ann.Cas. 165, 1904. These cases construed the phrase “game of chance”; and Commonwealth v. Plissner and Commonwealth v. Ward involved claw machines.
There was evidence in the case which tended to establish that an experienced player, going beyond directions, could, by rapidly spinning the locator-handle after the claw had seized an article and moved it upward, cause the boom to carry the claw and article more swiftly than it otherwise would to a point over the chute; and that this decreased the chances of the article’s being dropped on the way, so that such a player would have substantial success in obtaining an article once it had been grasped by the claw. But the appellant cannot escape the force of the statute because a player may, by going beyond the directions upon the machine, achieve a skill resulting in substantial success in obtaining articles once they have been grasped by the claw. It would overstrain credulity to conclude that the appellant set these machines up to be operated beyond directions 'and in a manner which would enable a skilled player to get a valuable item of merchandise for a nickel. Obviously the machines were -adapted, devised, and designed to operate in favor of the house.
In respect of the admission of evidence : The testimony of certain police officers that they operated the machines according to directions and largely unsuccessfully was objected to as negative in character. This objection goes to the weight, not to the admissibility, of the evidence.
The testimony of certain police officers as to their observation of the use of the machines by others was objected to as res inter alios acta. This rule of exclusion is designed to apply to evidence of transactions not affecting a party to the litigation and to which he was not a party. See Humble, Evidence (1934) § 342. But the rule is one merely of auxiliary policy authorizing a trial judge to exclude evidence which unduly multiplies issues or which, though relevant, may he unfairly prejudicial. See Hughes, Evidence (1907) pp. 36-7; 1 Wigmore, Evidence (2d ed.1923) c. 16, and especially therein Sections 443 and 444. So considered the rule is inapplicable in the instant case. The issue here is not one between the appellant and another as to the operation of the machines upon a particular occasion. The issue is whether or not the machines are gambling devices as played by the public according to directions. The manner and effect of the operation of the machines by members of the public, whether testified to by players themselves or by those observing players, is relevant to this issue; and such relevancy is not dependent upon the resolution of collateral issues. The evidence was not unfairly prejudicial.
Affirmed.

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