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:
Marie Ann SCIME, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Otis R. BOWEN, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, et al., Defendant-Appellant.
No. 974, Docket 87-6004.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued March 16, 1987.
Decided June 26, 1987.
Peter R. Maier, Civ. Div., U.S. Dept, of Justice (Richard K. Willard, Asst. Atty. Gen., Roger P. Williams, U.S. Atty., and William Kanter, Civ. Div., U.S. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D.C., of counsel), for defendant-appellant.
Timothy G. O’Connell, Buffalo, N.Y. (Siegel, Kelleher & Kahn, Buffalo, N.Y., of counsel, Kenneth I. Feinman, on the brief), for plaintiff-appellee.
Before KAUFMAN, MINER and MAHONEY, Circuit Judges.
MAHONEY, Circuit Judge:
The Secretary of Health & Human Services (“Secretary”) appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York holding that the Secretary is estopped from relying on appellee’s failure to file a written application (required by regulation) for child’s insurance benefits under the Social Security Act (“the Act”), 42 U.S.C. § 402(d) (1982 & Supp. Ill 1985), due to the “affirmative misconduct” of the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) in erroneously informing appellee (based upon incomplete factual information) that she was ineligible to receive such benefits. Scime v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 647 F.Supp. 89 (W.D.N.Y.1986). We reverse and remand.
BACKGROUND
The reader is referred to Chief Judge Curtin’s opinion for a full discussion of the tortuous procedural history of this case. Suffice it to say for our purposes that Marylyn R. Scime, a wage earner and the mother of appellee, died on September 30, 1978. Appellee’s father, Samuel J. Scime, inquired of the SSA as to appellee’s eligibility for child’s insurance benefits. Mr. Scime was advised by an SSA clerk (orally and in writing) that Mrs. Scime was not insured under the Act because she had not accumulated sufficient work quarters. In late 1981 or early 1982, however, Mr. Scime discovered, after reading a newspaper article about problems in record keeping and transfers of information between the Railroad Retirement Board and the SSA, that the SSA records pertaining to Mrs. Scime did not include five years of her work for the New York Central Railroad. When the record was corrected to reflect these lost years, Mrs. Scime was determined to have been fully insured at the time of her death.
Mr. Scime filed a written application on behalf of appellee with the SSA on March 18, 1982 seeking lump sum death benefits and child’s insurance benefits from September 30, 1978 onward. The SSA denied these claims under the theory that the written application was filed too late. In October, 1982, an Administrative Law Judge (“AU”) ruled that the Scimes were entitled to all the benefits they sought, holding that the SSA was estopped from raising the written application issue since it initially deemed that Mrs. Scime was not insured. The SSA promptly paid the lump sum death benefits, and has not subsequently contested this point.
In September, 1983, the SSA Appeals Council reopened the ALJ’s decision and in February, 1984 held that appellee was only entitled to child’s benefits from September, 1981, determined by applying the six months retroactive eligibility allowed by 20 C.F.R. § 404.621(a)(ii) (1986) from the March, 1982 date of written application. The Appeals Council reasoned that the SSA could not be estopped from enforcing the written application requirement set forth in 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.610 & 404.611 (1986), by virtue of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Schweiker v. Hansen, 450 U.S. 785, 101 S.Ct. 1468, 67 L.Ed.2d 685 (1981).
After a new hearing before another ALJ, occasioned by an inaudible taped transcript of the original administrative hearing, the Appeals Council held to its position that benefits could only be allowed from September, 1981. Scime appealed to the district court, which entered a judgment on the pleadings in her favor.
The district court distinguished the facts in the instant action from those in Schweiker v. Hansen, primarily on the basis that Hansen involved a misstatement of law on the part of an SSA official, while appellee’s case concerns “factual misrepresentation in the SSA’s own records on a fundamentally material matter.” Scime, 647 F.Supp. at 92. The court found the traditional elements of estoppel to be present, plus the additional element of “affirmative misconduct” by the government.
DISCUSSION
Like Judge Curtin, we are troubled by the government’s conduct and position in this case, and the result reached upon accepting the government’s argument seems manifestly unfair. Nevertheless, we are unconvinced that this case can be distinguished from Hansen based on the purported distinction between factual and legal misinformation conveyed by the government. No such distinction is fairly discoverable in Hansen. Hansen explicitly relies on a series of lower court cases denying estoppel arguments rooted in alleged misinformation conveyed to claimants by SSA officials. 450 U.S. at 788-89, 101 S.Ct. at 1470-71. These cases make no distinction between factual and legal misinformation, and one of the cases, Simon v. Califano, 593 F.2d 121 (9th Cir.1979), involved a material factual error on the part of the SSA official.
Our decision in Corniel-Rodriguez is of no help to appellee. That holding was limited, in Goldberg v. Weinberger, 546 F.2d 477, 481 n. 5 (2d Cir.1976), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 937, 97 S.Ct. 2648, 53 L.Ed.2d 255 (1977), to the specific facts of the case, particularly the immigration official’s failure to provide petitioner with a warning mandated by federal regulation. We decline to follow McDonald v. Schweiker, 537 F.Supp. 47 (N.D.Ind.1981), relied on by the district court; we find McDonald’s effort to distinguish Hansen unpersuasive.
We note that the opinion below stated that the “sole issue” in this case is the date upon which Marie Scime became entitled to receive surviving child’s benefits after the death of her mother, 647 F.Supp. at 89, but it is later stated, id. at 91, that the SSA mistakenly paid the claimant child survivor benefits beyond the date upon which it claims she lost her eligibility due to age, and now seeks their recovery. We have not considered this issue, which has not been presented to us, and wish no intimation to be derived from this opinion in the government's favor with respect to it. We note further that this situation may afford the government an opportunity to temper the harsh result we feel compelled to reach on the issue decided herein.
CONCLUSION
The judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent herewith. As provided by Fed.R.App.P. 39(b), the parties shall bear their own costs.
. The traditional elements of estoppel are: 1) the party to be estopped must know the facts; 2) he must intend that his conduct shall be acted on or must so act that the party asserting the estoppel has a right to believe it is so intended; 3) the latter must be ignorant of the true facts; and 4) he must rely on the former’s conduct to his injury. Scime, 647 F.Supp. at 92 n. 2.
. In Hansen, the Supreme Court did not decide whether even "affirmative misconduct" would estop the government from insisting upon compliance with its regulations governing welfare benefits. It held that the misinformation involved in that case did not amount to "affirmative misconduct.” 450 U.S. at 788-89, 101 S.Ct. at 1470-71. This circuit has held, however, that the government can be estopped where the traditional elements of estoppel and "affirmative misconduct” are present. Corniel-Rodriguez v. INS, 532 F.2d 301, 302 (2d Cir.1976).
. In Hansen, the SSA field representative erroneously informed the claimant that she was not eligible for mother’s insurance benefits under § 202(g) of the Act, and failed to advise the claimant, in contravention of the SSA’s Claims Manual, of the advantages of filing written applications. 450 U.S. at 786, 101 S.Ct. at 1469.

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

Choices:

Answer: 99