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:
Erwin M. SWAM, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, William Barry, Robert A. Hanselman and Jay G. Philpott, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 14280.
United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.
Jan. 20, 1964.
Rehearing Denied Feb. 26, 1964.
Paul H. Ferguson, Robert B. Borchers, Ferguson & Ferguson, Decatur, 111., for plaintiff-appellant.
Louis F. Oberdorfer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Morton K. Rothschild, Atty. U. S. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D. C., Edward R. Phelps, U. S. Atty., Springfield, 111., Lee A. Jackson, Robert N. Anderson, Attys. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D. C., for appellees.
Before DUFFY, SCHNACKENBERG, and SWYGERT, Circuit Judges.
SWYGERT, Circuit Judge.
Erwin M. Swam, plaintiff, brought this action for damages against the United States and three individuals, Jay G. Philpott, Robert A. Hanselman, and William Barry. Philpott was the district director of Internal Revenue at Springfield, Illinois; Hanselman and Barry were his deputies. The action involved the sale of plaintiff’s property for the payment of delinquent federal taxes.
In his complaint plaintiff alleged that he operated an electrical and engineering business in Decatur and Lincoln, Illinois; that a dispute arose with the Internal Revenue Service over the amount of income and unemployment taxes he had withheld from his employees and had not paid over to the federal government; that plaintiff requested the Internal Revenue agents to inform him of the amount “rightfully due,” but that Philpott and his deputies “negligently and wrongfully refused” to notify him of the amount of delinquent taxes and penalties owed by him; that the agents conducted a levy, seizure and sale of plaintiff’s property purportedly in accordance with Sections 6331 and 6335 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954; that the highest bid for plaintiff’s property was $1,510, although it was reasonably worth in excess of $50,-000; that the levy, seizure and sale were illegal in a number of ways because the agents failed to comply with the requirements of the statutes.
Defendants moved to dismiss the action for lack of jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim. The motion was granted January 2, 1963, on the ground that the district court lacked jurisdiction under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
On February 4, 1963, plaintiff filed a motion for leave to file an amended complaint against the individual defendants. Defendants opposed the motion on the ground that it was not timely filed within the ten-day period permitted under Rule 59 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The district court on February 25, 1963 denied plaintiff’s motion to amend because it “came too late and * * * there is no diversity jurisdiction.” Thereafter, on March 8, 1963, plaintiff filed a “motion to vacate orders of dismissal and for leave to amend.” The motion was denied April 24, 1963. Plaintiff filed his notice of appeal on June 24, 1963.
Defendants request a dismissal of this appeal. They contend that the notice of appeal was filed more than sixty days after the entry of the judgment of dismissal by the district court, contrary to Section 2107, 28 U.S.C. § 2107, and Rule 73(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; and that there were no timely motions the granting or denying of which might have extended the sixty-day period. Defendants argue that none of plaintiff’s motions filed subsequent to the order of dismissal on January 2nd were timely filed in accordance with rule 59; that the March 8th motion was not filed under Rule 60 (b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; and, therefore, there was no tolling of the time for appeal.
We disagree with defendants’ contention because we are of the view that the motion filed March 8th, although not captioned a motion under rule 60(b), must be treated as such. Not only is rule 60 (b) mentioned in the motion but the averments obviously were drafted with that rule in mind.
The appeal was from the order denying the motion of March 8th and there can be no question that it was filed within the period permitted under section 2107 and rule 73(a).
Rule 60(b) was not intended ,to be an alternative method to obtain review by appeal or as a means of enlarging by indirection the time for appeal. Flett v. W. A. Alexander & Co., 302 F.2d 321 (7th Cir. 1962); Morse-Starrett Products Co. v. Steccone, 205 F.2d 244 (9th Cir. 1953). When the instant casé-is thus viewed, it is apparent that neither the timeliness of the notice of appeal as-it relates to the January 2nd order of dismissal nor the order of dismissal itself are in issue.
Motions filed under rule 60(b)-are addressed to the discretion of the-district court; and unless there is an abuse of that discretion, its ruling will not be disturbed on appeal. Securities and Exchange Comm. v. Farm & Home Agency, Inc., 270 F.2d 891 (7th Cir. 1959); Perrin v. Aluminum Co. of America, 197 F.2d 254 (9th Cir. 1952),
Accordingly, the sole question before us is whether there was an abuse of discretion in denying plaintiff’s motion filed on March 8, 1963.
Plaintiff advanced two grounds-in his rule 60(b) motion for vacating the-order of dismissal and for leave to amend his complaint. The first was that the-district court “misconceived the character of the causes of action alleged in. plaintiff’s original complaint, mistakenly believing said causes of action to be-based upon the Federal Tort Claims Act, whereas plaintiff was declaring against the * * * United States * * *■ only under the Tort Claims Act * * *• and was asserting liability against the-individual defendants under general common law principles.” These avermentsdo not constitute the kind of mistake or inadvertence that comes within the ambit of rule 60(b). If plaintiff believed! the district court was mistaken as a matter of law in dismissing the original complaint, he should have appealed within, sixty days after the dismissal or he-might have filed a timely motion under-rule 59 to vacate the judgment of dismissal and for leave to amend his complaint. He did neither.
Plaintiff’s second ground was that he-was not served with a copy of defendants’ opposition to his request of February 4th for leave to file an amended complaint and that he had no opportunity to be heard before the court denied the request on February 25th.
Although we think the better practice would have been for the district court to have permitted plaintiff to be heard on his motion before ruling, plaintiff was not prejudiced. The motion for leave to amend was not timely filed; therefore, it was a nullity and the district judge could dispose of it sua sponte.
We conclude that the distinct court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion of March 8, 1963. Its order is affirmed.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1