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:
Lucille Dorothy PELTIER et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Robert Ernest PELTIER et al., Defendants, Appellants.
No. 76-1478.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Submitted Jan. 6, 1977.
Decided Feb. 9, 1977.
Aram K. Berberian, Cranston, R. I., on brief for appellants.
Michael F. Horan, Pawtucket, R. I., on brief for Lucille Dorothy Peltier, appellee.
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge, BOWNES, District Judge.
Of the District of New Hampshire sitting by designation.
PER CURIAM.
This appeal derives from attempts by several parties to remove divorce actions from the state to federal court. Appellants — all of whom are represented by the same attorney, who has unsuccessfully attempted the same course before — undertook to remove the divorce actions in which they were involved from the Rhode Island Family Court to the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island; that court ruled that the cited removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1443, did not give it jurisdiction over this type of action, and the cases were remanded to the state court. This appeal followed. See 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d).
The only conceivably relevant portion of § 1443 is § 1443(1), which provides for removal by a person “who is denied or cannot enforce in the courts of [a] State a right under any law providing for the equal civil rights of citizens of the United States . .” The Supreme Court has construed this statutory language as being limited to “any law providing for specific civil rights stated in terms of racial equality.” Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 792, 86 S.Ct. 1783, 1790, 16 L.Ed.2d 925 (1966). See Johnson v. Mississippi, 421 U.S. 213, 219-20, 95 S.Ct. 1591, 44 L.Ed.2d 121 (1975); Milligan v. Milligan, 484 F.2d 446, 447 (8th Cir. 1973); Pennsylvania ex rel. Gittman v. Gittman, 451 F.2d 155, 156-57 (3d Cir. 1971). Given this authoritative and binding construction, it is plain that the district court, as it ruled, was without jurisdiction under § 1443.
Appellants also challenge the propriety of the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees in appellees’ favor. Although the awarding of attorneys’ fees is not usual, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 257-59, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975); Diaz Gonzalez v. Colon Gonzalez, 536 F.2d 453, 458 n.17 (1st Cir. 1976), they may be awarded in those instances where a party “has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.” F. D. Rich Co. v. Industrial Lumber Co., 417 U.S. 116, 129, 94 S.Ct. 2157, 2165, 40 L.Ed.2d 703 (1974). See Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprise, Inc., 390 U.S. 400, 402 n.4, 88 S.Ct. 964, 19 L.Ed.2d 1263 (1968); Cordeco Development Corp. v. Santiago Vasquez, 539 F.2d 256, 262-63 & nn. 10-12 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 97 S.Ct. 488, 50 L.Ed.2d 586 (1976). The district court indicated full awareness that attorneys’ fees should be awarded under the bad faith exception “only in extraordinary circumstances and for dominating reasons of justice.” Cordeco Development Corp. v. Santiago Vasquez, supra at 263 (citations omitted). The court stated that a precondition to such an award is the finding of an “intentional institution of an action which one knows to be fictitious and wholly without merit and which is done for the specific purpose of frustrating and harassing lawfully instituted legal procedures.” Applying this strict standard, the court concluded that it should nonetheless impose attorneys’ fees because of the bad faith of appellants’ attorney. The court stated that “[t]he inescapable conclusion is that Mr. Berberian [the attorney] knew the removals were frivolous and that he instituted them for oppressive reasons” and that “frivolous and groundless petitions for removal were employed by Mr. Berberian in bad faith with the intent to delay and frustrate the Family Court’s jurisdiction.”
We have carefully reviewed the entire record with particular view to the adequacy of the finding of bad faith, and we are persuaded that the court did not abuse its discretion in making this determination and in awarding attorneys’ fees.
Affirmed. Double costs on appeal to appellees.
. See, e. g., Champion v. Champion, 539 F.2d 702 (1st Cir. 1976) (an appeal which we characterized as “frivolous”); Tetreault v. Tetreault, C.A. 75-0226 (D.R.I.), appeal dismissed on appellant’s motion, No. 75-1326 (1st Cir. Sept. 12, 1975).
. Appellant contends, in essence, that the Rhode Island Family Court discriminates against males in divorce actions and that § 1443 should be read as permitting removal in cases involving such alleged discrimination. He argues that recent Supreme Court decisions, such as Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 93 S.Ct. 1764, 36 L.Ed.2d 583 (1973), militate in favor of applying § 1443 to cases of sexual as well as of racial discrimination.
Appellant has not asserted — nor do we know of — any other statute which is properly available for removal of a divorce action. See Milligan v. Milligan, 484 F.2d 446 (8th Cir. 1973). Cf. Armstrong v. Armstrong, 508 F.2d 348 (1st Cir. 1974); H. Hart & H. Wechsler, The Federal Courts and The Federal System, 1189-92 (2d ed. 1973).
. The district court quite properly noted the distinction between conduct cognizable under the bad faith exception and “tenacious and persistent litigation of unsettled and novel issues.” See In re Bithoney, 486 F.2d 319, 322 (1st Cir. 1973).
. Among the reasons cited by the district court for its finding of bad faith was the lack of “even a modicum of supportive logic” for the proposition that § 1443 would authorize removal. The court concluded “that Mr. Berberian knew the removals were frivolous and that he instituted them for oppressive reasons.” The court obviously agreed with the suggestion of the moving spouses that the only purpose of the removals was “to frustrate the Family Court proceedings and hinder the movants in their attempt to acquire relief [viz. temporary support].”

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 99