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:
J. K. VISE and Annie D. Vise, Petitioners, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent.
No. 13942.
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.
May 19, 1960.
W. H. Fisher, Memphis, Tenn., for petitioners.
Sharon L. King, Washington, D. C. (Howard A. Heffron, Acting Asst. Atty. Gen., Lee A. Jackson, Harry Baum, Washington, D. C., Charles K. Rice, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.
Before O’SULLIVAN , Circuit Judge, and BOYD and THORNTON, District Judges.
On the day of the oral argument of the case in this Oourt, Judge O’SULLIVAN was a District Judge sitting by designation. He was sworn in as Circuit Judge on April 4, 1960.
THORNTON, District Judge.
This is a petition for review of the decision of the Tax Court of the United States finding deficiencies in income taxes and additions to tax with respect to the income tax of petitioner J. K. Vise for the years 1945-1948 inclusive, and of petitioners J. K. Vise and Annie D. Vise for the years 1949-1951 inclusive.
Appellants set forth four questions which they claim were answered erroneously by the Tax Court, thereby producing the conclusion we are requested to reverse on this review. Petitioners contend that there was no initial opening net worth base and, therefore, the net worth method utilized by respondent should have been discarded. Petitioners next contend that the Tax Court was in error in failing to discard the year 1945 and hold it not taxable. Petitioners’ third contention relates to the cashing, in 1946, of four Series E United States Bonds held by J. K. Vise and his mother. Their claim is that the Tax Court should have taken account of these proceeds for purposes of reducing the 1946 income. Lastly, it is the contention of petitioners that the Tax Court erred in finding petitioners guilty of fraud.
A careful reading of the opinion of Judge Stewart, now Justice Stewart, in Thomas v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 6 Cir., 223 F.2d 83, convinces us that the decision of the Tax Court in the case before us should be affirmed. There are not present in this case the shortcomings which prompted reversal in Thomas. On the contrary, the record here discloses that an application of the controlling principles set down in Thomas compels the conclusion we reach. The Thomas case and the cases cited therein are authority for the proposition that net worth is proper where the books or records do not correctly reflect the taxpayers’ true income. In the situation presented here it is clear that what scant records were available were highly inadequate as a reflection of true income. We think that the opening net worth figure used here has that degree of reasonable certainty to fulfill the requirement as laid down by the cases which treat this subject.
The rationale of appellants’ argument on the “absurdity” of the showing of income for 1945 escapes us, and we are unable to say that the determination of the existence of 1945 income is clearly erroneous. There is ample support for said determination.
In relation to petitioners’ question III the Tax Court concluded that the record is “patently incomplete”; that there was either no evidence in support of their position, or only self-serving declarations; that the petitioners failed to carry their burden of demonstrating error in the determination of respondent. There is nothing for us to add to this but to say that there is ample basis in the record for the result reached by the Tax Court.
Question IV has been determined by the Tax Court in accordance with well established principles of law, and the Tax Court’s application of these principles to a person of petitioner’s education and practical experience represents no deviation from fundamental concepts of fairness. The decision of the Tax Court 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: 2