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:
AGUILERA v. ICKES, Secretary of the Interior.
No. 5763.
Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.
Argued May 3, 1933.
Decided June 12, 1933.
Rehearing Denied June 29, 1933.
P. H. Loughran, of Washington, D., C., for appellant.
O. H. Graves, V. H. Wallace, and Charles Fahy, all of Washington, D. C., for appellee.
Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB, VAN ORSDEL, HITZ, and GRONER, Associate Justices.
VAN ORSDEL, Associate Justice.
Prior to 1918, appellant company Aguilera y Compania, a Cuban corporation, was engaged in the business of producing manganese ore in Cuba, near Santiago. It owned and operated two mines, known as the Ysabelita and the Ponupo, situated adjacent to the Cuba railroad at El Cristo. The Ysabe-Jita mine was situated about four miles from the railroad, and the ore was hauled to the railroad in ox and mule carts, where it was loaded on railroad cars, for movement to Santiago.
The company consisted of Charles F. Rand, Pedro Aguilera, and Eugenio Aguilera. It appears that Mr. Rand, during 1917 and 1918, was called to Washington by representatives of the United States Shipping Board and the Interior Department to give informa^ tion as to Cuban deposits of chrome and manganese ores, and to use his influence to stimulate production of these ores in Cuba. In February, 1918, two agents of the United States Shipping Board and the Interior Department went to Cuba, and requested appellant company to begin the production of manganese ore for the - United States, and advised the construction of a railroad from the Ysabelita mine to connect with the Cuba railroad at El Cristo.
Appellant company proceeded upon the request of the agents of the government to construct the railroad and furnish ore from its mines. This work continued from February 18, 1918, to November 11, 1918, the date of the Armistice.
A claim was submitted on May 26, 1919, by appellant company acting through Charles F. Rand, its vice president and treasurer, for an award of $104,922.83, representing the cost of constructing its railroad, together with certain expenses incident to its transportation facilities. The claim was rejected by the Secretary of the Interior, and on February 13, 1930, suit in equity was instituted in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia under the act of February 13, 1920, 45 Stat. 1166.
From a decree dismissing the bill this appeal was taken.
Section 5 of the act of March 2, 1919, 40 Stats. 1274 (50 USCA § 80 note), under whdeh the claim was originally filed, among other things provides: “That the Secretary of the Interior he, and he hereby is, authorized to adjust, liquidate, and pay such net losses as have been suffered by any person, firm, or corporation, by reason of producing or preparing to produce, either manganese, chrome, pyrites, or tungsten in compliance with the request or demand of the Department of the Interior, the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Shipping Board, or the Emergency Fleet Corporation to supply the urgent needs of the Nation in the prosecution of the war.”
It is contended by appellant that the request to build a railroad and other appliances should he regarded as separate and distinct from the request to produce ore. It is urged that the company was making large profits prior to the time that it was requested to construct the railroad and other appliances, and that the losses which it sustained in the transaction through the building of the railroad should not be offset against its profits from the mining and production of the ore. We are not impressed by this contention. The Secretary of the Interior, or his agents, were not authorized under the act to request or demand the construction of a railroad as an independent agency. It could only be requested as an adjunct or aid in the producing of ore, and its cost could only be regarded as a part of the expenses incurred in the producing the ore. In computing the net losses, therefore, the loss resulting from the construction of the railroad and appliances must be considered as a part of the entire operation of producing or preparing to produce manganese.
This was the view taken by the War Minerals Belief Commission when considering this case. Taking the loss sustained from constructing the railroad and its appliances and treating it as an expense in the producing of the ores, the commission found as a fact, which is controlling here, that the “statements submitted by the claimant show that the not loss of the Ysabelita mine and railroad from February 18, 1918, to November 11, 1918, was $22,949.04, hut that the net result of operations at both the Ysabelita and the Ponupo mines was a profit of $94,-544.71.” Based upon this finding of fact, the commission held “that no net loss was sustained by the claimant in its operation in producing manganese, either during the entire period of the war, or during the period after stimulation and the signing of the Armistice.”
In other words, the commission treated the operation of the Ysabelita and the Ponupo mines as a single transaction. In this conclusion we agree. The government, in promoting stimulation, was dealing with a single company owning two mines located nine miles apart. The act of stimulation extended to both mines, and called upon appellant company to use the best means and facilities under its control to produce manganese for the use of the United States. Nowhere does it appear that there was any intention to treat the Ysabelita mine and the construction of the railroad as separate enterprises, nor is there any evidence in the record that it was so understood by appellant company during the stimulation period from February 18, 1918, to the date of the Armistice, November 11,1918.
Under the 1920 act permitting a claimant to proceed in equity in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia for a review of the action of the Secretary in disallowing his claim, the findings of fact by the commission in the ease upon which the Secretary based his decision axe made final and conclusive upon the court. This limits us, in the present ease, to the single question of whether or not as a matter of law the Secretary erred in treating the operation and production of the two mines as a single transaction. We agree with the conclusion reached by the Secretary.
Other questions have been raised in this case, namely, as to whether or not a foreign company or citizen would he entitled to make a claim under the provisions of the War Minerals Relief Act (Act March 2, 1919 [50 USCA § 80 note]); also whether the appellant company, appearing here in the name of the surviving partner, is in fact a partnership or a corporation. It is unnecessary for us to consider these questions, since in the absence of any net loss no cause of action exists, and this conclusively disposes of the case.
The decree is 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