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:
The GEIS CONSTRUCTION CO., and United States Guarantee Company, Appellants, v. The UNITED STATES of America, for the Use of TOM IGEL COMPANY, Appellee.
No. 13021.
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.
April 24, 1957.
William J. Lohr, Columbus, Ohio (Robert Dow Hamilton, Columbus, Ohio, on the brief), for appellants.
Joe F. Asher, Columbus, Ohio (Vernon L. Stouffer, Calland, Stouffer & Asher, Columbus, Ohio, on the brief), for ap-pellee.
Before ALLEN, McALLISTER and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Appellee furnished materials and labor to a subcontractor employed on a government project. The appellant was the prime contractor. The subcontractor went into receivership, and the appel-lee thereafter filed the present action under the Miller Act, 40 U.S.C.A. § 270b to recover the balance owing for labor and materials. This appeal is from the district court’s judgment against the appellant general contractor for the amount owed appellee under its contract with the subcontractor.
Appellant contends (1) that the ap-pellee failed to file his claim with appellant within ninety days after performing the last work under the contract, thus losing the right to recover under the statute, and (2) that the district court erred in refusing to admit evidence to show that the contract price exceeded the reasonable value of the materials furnished and services performed by the ap-pellee.
Whether the appellee performed work under its subcontract within ninety days before it filed its claim was a question answered in the affirmative by a jury, upon a special interrogatory framed by the appellant. The jury’s finding was supported by substantial evidence.
It was not error for the district court to exclude evidence of the actual value of the services performed and to enter judgment for the amount due under the contract, in the absence of any showing of fraud or collusion between the appellee and the subcontractor.
The judgment 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: 2