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:
SHEEHAN v. NIMS et al.
No. 230.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Feb. 11, 1935.
Fenton, Wing & Morse, of Rutland, Vt., for appellants.
Novak & Bloomer, of Rutland, Vt., and James Brownlee, of Springfield, Vt., for appellee.
Before MANTON, SWAN, and AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judges.
SWAN, Circuit Judge.
The plaintiff’s intestate met his death in an automobile accident which occurred on the main highway in Westminster, Vt., on November 2, 1932. He was riding in a Ford car operated by one Farrow, which collided with the left rear end of a White truck owned by the defendant Nims and operated by the defendant Macomber. At the time of the collision, the truck was stationary, headed north, and Farrow, who approached from the south, was attempting to pass it on the left; he did not turn out sufficiently to clear it. The truck stood well over to the right-hand side of the concrete pavement, and left substantially twelve feet of the pavement for the passage of other vehicles. It did not carry a light known as a “clearance lamp” which the Vermont statutes require such a truck to display on its left side when operated or at rest on a highway during the period from thirty minutes after sunset to thirty minutes before sunrise. P. L. Vt. 5120. The accident occurred between 5:30 and 6 p. m., which was concededly more than thirty minutes after sunset. However, it was not yet dark; it was twilight. Some drivers had not turned on their lights. The tail-light of the truck was out of order, and defendant Macomber testified that he had just hung near the left rear corner a lighted kerosene lantern with a red globe. Farrow, however, denied seeing any such light as he approached, and claimed that, when he discovered that the truck was stationary, he was too near it to avoid the collision. The case was submitted to the jury under instructions which informed them that the defendants’ admitted failure to display the statutory clearance light constituted negligence, and that the jury were to determine whether such negligence was a proximate cause of the collision and whether Sheehan, the decedent, was guilty of contributory negligence. They returned a verdict for the plaintiff.
The appellants, as their principal contention, assert that it was error for the District Judge to rule as a matter of law that they were negligent, instead of submitting that issue to the jury as he was requested to do. While it is true that in many states the violation of a standard of care prescribed by statute is held to be negligence per se, the law of Vermont is otherwise. Landry v. Hubert, 101 Vt. 111, 141 A. 593, 63 A. L. R. 396; Jasmin v. Parker, 102 Vt. 405, 148 A. 874; Steele v. Fuller, 104 Vt. 303, 158 A. 666; Rule v. Johnson, 104 Vt. 486, 162 A. 383; Sulham v. Bernasconi, 106 Vt. 192, 170 A. 913; Palmer v. Margeille (Vt.) 175 A. 31. On such a point the federal, court will follow the state law. Brown v. Walter, 62 F.(2d) 798,800 (C. C. A. 2). From the foregoing authorities relating to similar safety regulations it appears that a violation of the statute in question gives rise to a rebuttable presumption of negligence which may be overcome by proof of the attendant circumstances if they are sufficient to persuade the jury that a reasonable and prudent driver would have acted as did the person whose conduct is in question.
Counsel for the appellee contends that this is so only when the delinquent party is in a position to substitute his own judgment of what is prudent for that of the Legislature. Since the truck was not equipped with clearance lights, it is argued that the appellants were never able to exercise their judgment .as to when the lights should be displayed. This argument is specious. Admittedly, while on the highway the appellants had no choice other than to operate without lights; but they had the choice of not being on the highway at all, and their act in operating the truck at the particular time in question might well have involved a decision that to do so was not imprudent. The appellee further urges that not enough was shown to overcome the prima facie case made by proof of absence of a clearance light, and hence the peremptory instruction that negligence existed was justifiable. This contention we are unable to accept. Although it was more than thirty minutes after sunset, it was not yet dark. The truck was standing on a straight stretch of road where it could be expected to be seen from a considerable distance by any motorist approaching from the rear. According to the defendants’ testimony, a lighted red lantern was hung near to the left rear corner. The driver intended to leave the truck standing only so long as it should take him to walk three hundred feet to a garage and back again with a borrowed tool with which he would change the gasoline feed pipe from one tank to another so that he could resume his journey. Whether under- th,e same circumstance a reasonable and prudent driver would have done as he did, despite the prohibition of the statute, seems to us a jury question under the Vermont cases. In Rule v. Johnson, supra, there was no dispute concerning the violation of a regulation which forbade three persons to occupy the driver’s seat, but there was some evidence that the seat was not crowded nor the driver hin-' dered in his operation of the truck. The court held that it was for the jury to say whether the presumption of negligence had been rebutted, as well as whether the violation of the regulation was a proximate cause of the accident. In view of the state decisions, we feel constrained to reverse the judgment because the issue of negligence was not left to the jury, however improbable it may seem that the result would have been different had they passed upon it.
The defendants also charge error in the exclusion of testimony offered for the purpose of showing that other trucks of the same type as the defendants’ and used by the state highway department did not carry clearance lights- as prescribed by the statute. As this question may again arise on the new trial, it seems desirable to express our opinion upon it. The admissibility of this evidence seems to be urged on two unrelated grounds; the first being as an aid to construction of the statute. It is claimed that the statute was not intended to apply to the type of truck having a flat platform body, but only to the “moving-van” type. There is nothing in the words of the statute to justify the claim. Even if the language were ambiguous, we are aware of no rule of law which would permit the evidence as an aid to its construction. The second ground on which the evidence is claimed to be admissible is that it bears on the question of ordinary prudence. Although the Vermont cases say that the statutory standard of care is but an additional factor to be taken into consideration in measuring the defendants’ conduct by the rule of the prudent man in like circumstances, no case has been called to our attention which excuses noncompliance with the statute because others have also disregarded it A general custom to violate it would not prevent the defendants violation from making a prima facie case of negligence. We think the District Judge rightly excluded the testimony.
None of the errors alleged in respect to the admission of evidence presents any question worthy of discussion. Nor need we determine whether the defendants’ motion for a mistrial and continuance should have been granted because of inquiries addressed to the júrymen on the voir dire respecting the Merchants’ Mutual Insurance Company. In Brown v. Walter, 62 F.(2d) 798 (C. C. A. 2), there was. presented an obvious effort to prejudice the jury by repeated references to insurance. In the present case the subject was brought up by the volunteered remark of a juryman. While it would seem that the interests of the plaintiff could have been protected without going so far as to refer to a particular corporation by name, we need not now decide whether the questions asked were of themselves enough as to require upsetting the verdict. The situation is not likely to be repeated on the next trial.
The alleged error in denying the defendants’ motion to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial is not a ground which can be taken in an appeal in the federal courts. Miller v. Maryland Casualty Co., 40 F.(2d) 463 (C. C. A. 2).
For the error in respect to the charge to the jury, the judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial.

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: 99