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:
TeleSTAR, INC., Petitioner, v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION and the United States of America, Respondents, MCI Telecommunications Corporation, Intervenor.
Nos. 88-1153, 88-1419.
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Oct. 6, 1989.
Donald F. Beach, for petitioner.
John E. Ingle, Deputy Associate Gen. Counsel, F.C.C., with whom Sue Ann Pres-kill, Atty., were for respondent.
William J. Byrnes, with whom John Wells King and James E. Dunstan, Washington, D.C., appeared on the motion to dismiss filed by intervenor.
Also entering an appearance for respondent was John J. Powers, III, Atty., U.S. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D.C.
Before MIKVA, EDWARDS and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.
ON MOTION TO DISMISS PETITION FOR REVIEW NO. 88-1419
PER CURIAM:
The question before us is whether a petition for review, unripe because of the pendency of a request for agency reconsideration, ripens so as to vest this court with jurisdiction once the agency issues its final decision on reconsideration. We hold that this court does not have jurisdiction to consider the prematurely-filed petition for review, even after the agency rules on the rehearing request. In order to obtain review of a now-final agency order, a new petition for review must be filed.
This action involves an application filed by TeleSTAR, Inc., and its principal shareholders, Doyal Evan Stewart and Walter Noel Stewart, for revocation of a license issued to MCI Telecommunications Corporation (“MCI”) by the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “Commission”). TeleSTAR’s application alleged unlawful premature construction, unauthorized operation and failure to coordinate frequency usage.
In two orders dated January 25,1988 and February 18, 1988, the FCC denied TeleS-TAR’s application. The FCC did find, however, that MCI had violated section 319(a) of the Communications Act (“the Act”), 47 U.S.C. § 319(a) (1982), by commencing station construction prior to the receipt of Commission authorization. The Commission determined that the violations were willful and repeated as defined in 47 U.S.C. § 503(b)(1) (1982), and that two were actionable under that section. Based on these findings, the FCC issued to MCI a Notice of Apparent Liability for forfeiture in the amount of $10,000.
The instant petition for review, No. 88-1419, filed on June 13, 1988, challenges the Commission’s June 2, 1988 ruling denying TeleSTAR’s “Petition for Revocation of MCI’s FCC Authority Revisited — New FCC Violations by MCI during 1988.” On June 2, 1988, TeleSTAR also filed “Comments on Reconsideration” with the FCC. The Commission treated these comments as a petition for reconsideration, and the agency denied TeleSTAR’s reconsideration request in an order dated November 21, 1988. Because the petition for review was filed five months before the agency ruled on TeleS-TAR’s petition for reconsideration, MCI moved to dismiss the petition for review as premature. Although a petition for review from the November 21, 1988 reconsideration order was filed, it has been dismissed as untimely pursuant to separate order of the court. See TeleSTAR, Inc. v. FCC, No. 89-1156.
This court recently held that “a pending petition for administrative reconsideration renders the underlying agency action nonfi-nal, and hence unreviewable, with respect to the petitioning party.” United Transportation Union v. ICC, 871 F.2d 1114 (D.C.Cir.1989) (“UTU”). Therefore, a party can no longer simultaneously move for reconsideration before the agency and petition this court for review. See ICC v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 482 U.S. 270, 284, 107 S.Ct. 2360, 2368-69, 96 L.Ed.2d 222 (1987) (a timely petition for administrative reconsideration stays the running of the Hobbs Act’s limitations period until the petition has been acted on by the agency).
Based on UTU, TeleSTAR’s June 13, 1988 petition for review was premature when filed. If TeleSTAR’s motion for reconsideration were still pending before the agency, the petition for review clearly would have to be dismissed. Although the agency has since acted on the motion for reconsideration and there are presently no related matters pending before the FCC, the question still remains as to whether this court now has jurisdiction over the prematurely-filed petition for review.
This court has in the past dismissed challenges to non-final agency action, even after final agency action has been taken. See Public Citizen v. NRC, 845 F.2d 1105 (D.C.Cir.1988) (petition for review filed before the occurrence of the act to be reviewed is incurably premature under the Waste Act and Hobbs Act); Western Union Telegraph Co. v. FCC, 773 F.2d 375 (D.C.Cir.1985) (petition for review filed after agency action issued but before agency order entered was dismissed as premature). Compare Sacks v. Rothberg, 845 F.2d 1098, 1099 (D.C.Cir.1988) (per curiam) (“appeal taken prematurely effectively ripens and secures appellate jurisdiction when the district court’s judgment becomes final pri- or to disposition of the appeal”).
While final agency action can ripen an issue for appellate review, Western Union Telegraph Co. v. FCC, 773 F.2d 375 (D.C.Cir.1985), the filing of a challenge to agency action before the agency has issued its decision on reconsideration is incurably premature. We hold therefore that when a petition for review is filed before the challenged action is final and thus ripe for review, subsequent action by the agency on a motion for reconsideration does not ripen the petition for review or secure appellate jurisdiction. To cure the defect, the challenging party must file a new notice of appeal or petition for review from the now-final agency order. We develop this bright line test to discourage the filing of petitions for review until after the agency completes the reconsideration process. If a party determines to seek reconsideration of an agency ruling, it is a pointless waste of judicial energy for the court to process any petition for review before the agency has acted on the request for reconsideration.
Our action today only applies to situations where a party must choose between rehearing before the agency or immediate court review. Where agency rehearing is mandated by statute, those statutes necessarily dictate when a litigant may petition for court review. Even then however, a statutory scheme may permit court review before the agency has issued its order on rehearing. See, e.g., 15 U.S.C. § 717r (1982) (under section 19(a) of the National Gas Act, unless the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission acts upon an application for rehearing within thirty days after it is filed, such application may be deemed to be denied for purposes of judicial review).
In UTU, we ruled that this court does not have jurisdiction to review an agency order while a petition for agency reconsideration is pending. We did not have occasion to consider whether final agency action on the reconsideration request can ripen a prematurely-filed petition for review and vest this court with jurisdiction. While we hold today that a prematurely-filed petition does not ripen, we will give this rule prospective effect. Accordingly, we deny the motion to dismiss in this case and permit consideration of the originally-premature petition for review.
. A different case may be presented if a petitioner first seeks court review of a final agency action and then subsequently requests reconsideration before the agency. We have no occasion today to decide whether the court would retain jurisdiction in such a case.

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