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:
ALASKA CONSOL. CANNERIES, Inc., et al. v. TERRITORY OF ALASKA.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
December 3, 1928.
No. 5431.
J. A. Hellenthal and S. Hellenthal, both of Juneau, Alaska, for plaintiffs in error.
John Rustgard, Atty. Gen., for the Territory of Alaska.
Before GILBERT, RUDKIN, and DIETRICH, Circuit Judges.
DIETRICH, Circuit Judge.
In February and March, 1923, the appellant companies took out several licenses to operate fish traps in Alaskan waters and paid as fees at the rate of $200 per trap, as was then required by the laws of the territory. On May 5, 1923, the Legislature passed an amendatory act (Laws Alaska 1923, e. 101) by which there was added to the $200 fee at the rate of $2 per 1,000 for all fish caught in any one trap in excess of 100,000, and by virtue of an emergency clause the act became immediately effective. Up to that time the appellants had caught no fish, but during the remainder of the calendar year they took in excess of 100,000 in each trap. They declined to make any further license payment, and this suit was brought to recover from them an amount arrived at by computing the excess catch at the rate of $2 per 1,000 as provided in the amendatory act. To an answer setting up certain legal defenses, a demurrer was sustained, and, the appellants declining to plead further, judgment was entered against them, from which they prosecute this appeal.
They first contend that the exaction is void, because it is essentially a property tax, and is not according to value, as required by the Organic Act of the territory. But we think it is an excise and not a property tax; we so held in Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. Territory of Alaska (C. C. A.) 236 F. 52. The slight differences between the law as it then stood and as now amended are inconsequential. See, also, Pacific American Fisheries v. Territory of Alaska (C. C. A.) 2 F.(2d) 9; Id., 269 U. S. 269, 46 S. Ct. 110, 70 L. Ed. 270, and Alaska Consolidated Canneries v. Territory of Alaska (C. C. A.) 16 F.(2d) 256.
It is also contended ' that by the amendatory act the Legislature did not intend that its provisions should apply where, prior to its passage, licenses had issued, and further that, if such was the intent, it cannot be given effect, for a license so issued constitutes a contract which the Legislature is without power to impair. Both contentions we think are ruled adversely by Alaska Consolidated Canneries v. Territory of Alaska, supra. The distinction attempted to be made by putting a strained construction upon the clause “where the taxes were not a fixed sum,” found in the latter part of that decision, is unsubstantial. In principle the two eases are the same, and the reasoning there employed is equally cogent here. To hold otherwise would be to say that only a contract, the obligations of which have been fully performed by the one party thereto, is protected against impairment.
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: 2