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:
ITT INDUSTRIAL CREDIT COMPANY, A Nevada Corporation, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DURANGO CRUSHERS, INC., A Delaware Corporation; Roger Morrison, Defendants-Appellants.
No. 85-1976.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Oct. 7, 1987.
Decided Nov. 5, 1987.
Don Michael Blumenthal (Roger A. Morrison, Chevy Chase, Md., Joann Langston, on brief), for defendants-appellants.
Wayne G. Gracey (B. Marvin Potter, Schlachman, Potter, Belsky & Weiner, P.A., Baltimore, Md., on brief), for plaintiff-ap-pellee.
Before CHAPMAN and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges, and HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge.
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
Durango Crushers, Inc. and Roger Morrison appeal the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees against them in connection with their attempt to remove an action from state court. We affirm.
In 1983, Durango entered into a security agreement with ITT Industrial Credit Co. and executed an installment note to ITT. Morrison, as president of Durango, personally guaranteed Durango’s debt to ITT in a separate instrument. Durango defaulted on the note in 1984, and ITT brought suit in Maryland state court against Durango and Morrison. Durango and Morrison sought removal under 28 U.S.C. § 1441 on the basis of diversity of citizenship.
Section 1441(b) forbids removal of a suit on the basis of diversity where a defendant is a citizen of the state in which suit is brought. Morrison was a resident of Maryland, but Durango and Morrison claimed that the entire suit could be removed under § 1441(c), which allows the removal of non-removable claims if they are joined with a “separate and independent claim or cause of action, which would be removable if sued upon alone.” 28 U.S.C. § 1441(c) (1982). Diversity existed between ITT and Durango, and appellants contended that ITT’s claims against them were separate and independent.
The district court, however, rejected that argument and granted ITT’s motion to remand the entire case to state court. The removal statutes permit the award of “just costs” if a suit is “removed improvidently and without jurisdiction,” 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c) (1982), and the district court awarded ITT attorneys’ fees of $3,991 and costs of $25.93. Durango and Morrison contend that the district court erred in granting attorneys’ fees.
Ordinarily, a district court may not award attorneys' fees absent express Congressional authorization. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975). Exceptions to the “American Rule,” whereby each party pays its own attorney’s fees, are matters of legislative providence. As the Alyeska court pointed out, however, courts do have inherent power to award attorney’s fees against a party who has acted in bad faith. 421 U.S. at 258-59, 95 S.Ct. at 1622. The limited authority of the district courts to award fees as a sanction for a removal taken in bad faith is widely recognized. See, e.g., Cornwall v. Robinson, 654 F.2d 685, 687 (10th Cir.1981); Muirhead v. Bonar, 556 F.2d 735, 737 (5th Cir.1977). Although § 1447(c) itself conveys no power on the district courts to award attorneys’ fees, the district court did not err in awarding attorney’s fees against Durango and Morrison because their removal petition was so patently without merit that the “inescapable conclusion” is that it was filed in bad faith. See Peltier v. Peltier, 548 F.2d 1083, 1084 (1st Cir.1977).
It was clear at the time of the removal petition that Morrison was a citizen of Maryland, and that the appellants could not remove the suit under § 1441(b). It should have been clear to the appellants, and would have been clear to any reasonable attorney, that § 1441(c) provided no basis for the removal.
In American Fire & Casualty Co. v. Finn, 341 U.S. 6, 14, 71 S.Ct. 534, 540, 95 L.Ed.2d 702 (1951), the Supreme Court stated that “where there is a single wrong to plaintiff, for which relief is sought arising from an interlocked series of transactions, there is no separate and independent cause of action under § 1441(c).” Appellants are correct in observing that ITT’s two claims were brought against two distinct parties and were based on two different instruments, but it is readily apparent that the claims grew out of “a single wrong ... arising from an interlocked series of transactions.”
The guarantee of Morrison, as president of Durango, was a condition of ITT’s loan to Durango. ITT’s claims thus arise from a single transaction and a single debt. Du-rango and Morrison argue that the claims are separate and independent, but it would be nearly unthinkable for a creditor like ITT to seek to collect a debt in this situation without joining both the corporate debtor and the individual guarantor. The very purpose of a guarantee is to link the obligations of debtor and guarantor.
The removal statutes allow defendants to invoke federal jurisdiction in appropriate cases. They do not make of the courts a maze through which plaintiffs can needlessly be run in order to have their claims determined. The district court properly imposed sanctions for this abuse of the removal process. Its decision is hereby
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: 1