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:
John D. MACHIN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
No. 16705.
United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.
June 1, 1961.
John Machin, pro se.
Osro Cobb, U. S. Atty., Little Rock, Ark., and Milton D. Bowers, Asst. U. S. Atty., Little Rock, Ark., for appellee.
Before SANBORN, VOGEL and VAN OOSTERHOUT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This is an appeal from an order denying a motion of John D. Machin, under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, for the vacation of a three-year sentence of imprisonment imposed on him April 21, 1959. The sentence was based upon his plea of guilty to an Information filed against him in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on March 17, 1959, after he had filed a waiver of indictment. On April 3, 1959, Machin filed in that court a “Consent to Transfer of Case for Plea and Sentence,” duly signed by him, reading as follows:
“I, John Donovan Machin, defendant, have received and read a copy of the Information pending against me in the above-styled and numbered cause, and understand the charge stated therein, and having been advised of my constitutional rights, including the right to advice of counsel, I wish to plead guilty to the offense charged, to waive trial thereunder in the Northern District of California and to consent to disposition of the case in the Eastern District of Arkansas, Western Division, in which I am under arrest.”
Having procured the transfer of his case, under Rule 20 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 18 U.S.C., from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, for the purpose of entering a plea of guilty, Machin came before the latter court for arraignment on April 20, 1959. The court advised him fully of the charge contained in the Information (interstate transportation of a forged Travelers Check, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2314), and stated to Machin what the consequences of his conviction of the offense might be. The coui’t asked him if he wanted an attorney. His answer was “No, sir.” Machin then tendered his plea of guilty, which the court, after making certain that it was entirely voluntary, accepted.
In interrogating Machin after he had entered his plea and before he was sentenced, the court was told by him that he had three years of a State court sentence, imposed in 1952, left to serve in the Washington State Penitentiary. The court imposed a sentence of imprisonment for seven years, to run concurrently with Machin’s “present state sentence in the State of Washington.” All this happened on April 20, 1959. The following day, Machin was returned into court for further proceedings, at which the court, after affording him an opportunity to make a further statement, reduced the seven-year sentence of imprisonment to a straight three-year sentence. Apparently the court and Government counsel were uncertain as to what would be the effect of attempting to make the federal seven-year sentence imposed on April 20 concurrent with some un-served portion of a state sentence.
Machin now proclaims that, in violation of his constitutional rights, he has been sentenced twice and put in jeopardy twice for the same offense— which is nonsense. Under Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the court had the right on April 21 to correct the sentence imposed on April 20 if it was illegal, and to reduce it whether it was illegal or not. A seven-year federal sentence of imprisonment to be served concurrently with a state sentence of uncertain duration and uncertain existence is, unquestionably, still a seven-year sentence. Machin is in no position to complain of its reduction.
There is no basis in the record for Machin’s assertion that his constitutional right to the assistance of counsel was disregarded. The record is directly to the contrary.
In the case of Higgins v. Steele, 8 Cir., 195 F.2d 366, 369, this Court said:
“ * * * While it is important that no prisoner be denied justice because of his poverty, it is also important that the prison authorities, government counsel, and the courts be not harassed by patently repetitious, meritless, frivolous or malicious proceedings.”
We think the District Court might well have denied Machin’s application for leave to appeal in forma pauperis from the denial of his motion to vacate sentence.
The order appealed from 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: 0