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:
BANCO POPULAR de PUERTO RICO, Defendant, Appellant, v. Juan Elias DELIZ, a/k/a John Donald Deliz, Plaintiff, Appellee. Jose M. MEDINA et al., Defendants, Appellants, v. Juan Elias DELIZ, a/k/a John Donald Deliz, Plaintiff, Appellee.
Nos. 7030, 7031.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
March 13, 1969.
Vicente Zayas Puig, with whom Alberto Pico, Francisco Ponsa Feliu and Baragano, Trias, Saldana & Francis, San Juan, P. R., were on brief, for appellant in No. 7030.
Alberto Pico, with whom Vicente Zayas Puig, Francisco Ponsa Feliu and Baragano, Trias, Saldana & Francis, San Juan, P. R., were on brief, for appellants in No. 7031.
Stanley L. Feldstein, with whom Nachman, Feldstein, Laffitte & Smith, San Juan, P. R., was on brief, for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, Mc-ENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
ALDRICH, Chief Judge.
, These are joint appeals by defendants in an action brought in the district court for the District of Puerto Rico by Juan Elias Deliz, the son and sole heir of Juan Elias Deliz Gonzales, hereinafter the decedent, against decedent’s sister and her husband, Jose M. Medina, citizens of Puerto Rico, and Banco Popular de Puerto Rico. Plaintiff is a citizen of Texas, and the jurisdictional requirements were met. Plaintiff claims that his aunt, with the cooperation of Ihe bank, converted decedent’s two savings accounts, in the total amount of $17,359, while he was mortally ill in the hospital. The jury found for the plaintiff in the amount of $3,542. The court set the verdict aside and ordered judgment for the plaintiff for $11,829, or, in the alternative, ordered a new trial on damages. Defendants appeal.
The evidence might be interesting in full detail were we writing a novel, but as a court matter much may be omitted. Using withdrawal orders decedent had signed, the defendant sister transferred his funds in New York into an account standing in her name in the Banco Popular. She allegedly then expended $5,530 to decedent’s purposes, including $2,250 given to the plaintiff, and later allegedly gave $12,000 in $100 bills to decedent in the hospital, shortly before he and a lady who had long been his mistress, one Hortensia de Blanck, returned to New York. The sister, accordingly, claimed she had accounted in full.
The testimony as to the $5,530 was not disputed. With two alternatives open to it, to find for the plaintiff for $11,829, being $17,359 less $5,530, or, on the testimony that the sister had returned the entire balance, to find for the defendants, the jury made an intermediate finding which could not be justified on the evidence. Concluding this was an impermissible compromise, the court set the verdict aside. Its further orders were based upon its determination that the $12,000 payment testimony was unbelievably “fantastic” as a whole, or, alternatively, did not amount to a proper delivery. In addition, the court awarded counsel fees for obstinacy.
We need not consider to what extent, if any, a court in a case tried to a jury may order judgment in disregard of the specific factual testimony of three alleged eye-witnesses by finding it to be “fantastic.” We are not persuaded in this case that it was fantastic, nor that, if true, it could not constitute delivery. As to the latter, no testimony reflected upon decedent’s mental abilities. If he wanted to take back $12,000 in cash, that was his affair. With respect to the supposed fantasy of giving $12,000 in caish to a dying man (who was well enough to travel from Puerto Rico to New York, and who lived three more weeks), decedent knew he was dying and that he was going back to New York with a lady who had long been his mistress. He might well want the money for his immediate bills, with the balance for her. The fact that Hortensia testified that “of course” she knew nothing of the money did not mean that the sister was the storyteller. With a litigious son around, Hortensia could be thought to have a strong motive for concealment. Defendants presented enough evidence to entitle them to a jury’s resolution of their claims. Roche v. New Hampshire Nat. Bank, 1. Cir., 1951, 192 F.2d 203. See Rainey v. Gay’s Express, Inc., 1 Cir., 1960, 275 F.2d 450. Ordering judgment for the plaintiff for $11,832 was error.
The ordering of a new trial, on the other hand, in the light of the inexplicable amount of the verdict, was not an abuse of the court’s discretion.. National Fire Ins. Co. v. Great Lakes Warehouse Corp., 7 Cir., 1958, 261 F.2d 35; Schuerholz v. Roach, 4 Cir., 1932, 58 F.2d 32, cert. denied 287 U.S. 623, 53 S.Ct. 78, 77 L.Ed. 541. Whether the new trial be on damages only, or on liability, is one and the same, so far as the defendant sister is concerned, because she admitted the original obligation and claimed payment. However, with respect to the bank, if the deposit was in. the sister’s name with the consent of the decedent, the bank would not be liable even though she failed to account. The court’s exclusion of decedent’s instructions was error. See, e. g., Ward v. United States, 5 Cir., 1962, 296 F.2d 898, 903; Young v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 4 Cir., 1957, 244 F.2d 333, 337; 6 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1770, at 185 (3d ed. Í940). It is true that the bank made no offer of proof. We overlook this because the proffered witness was not the bank’s witness. The bank is entitled to a new trial on liability.
While the matter is now mooted, we are sufficiently disturbed about counsel fees for obstinacy (32 L.P.R.A. App. II R. 44.4(d)) to comment thereon. There is a tendency on the part of successful counsel to feel that they prevailed because of their astuteness, and at the same time to consider that opposing counsel were obstreperous and “obstinate” in having opposed them. This latter thought may predominate when the question of counsel fees for obstinacy arises. Our own view is that usually parties and counsel on both sides may be considered less than fully cooperative, and that it is the exception when counsel fees should be awarded. -The present case is an example. Plaintiff’s counsel informed the court- — a visiting court not acquainted with the Puerto Rico practice —that plaintiff should recover “20 to 30 percent in the matter litigated.” Counsel neglected to point out that in the complaint plaintiff sought $17,362, without credit for $2,250 for which he had given a receipt. During the trial the defendant sister also sought credit for an additional $3,280 for which plaintiff makes no criticism. In awarding counsel fees the court stated it felt “25 per cent of the total sum” was fair. But by this it meant 25 percent of $17,359, for it awarded $4,339.
When defendants complained in this court that $4,339 was 37 percent of the recovery, plaintiff expostulated, “[Defendants’] allegation is supported by a mathematical process of reducing the award to various percentages (an operation never undertaken by the court below) of the judgment and eventually concluding that the award represents 37 % of the total amount granted in damages.” These remarks are apparently meant to be critical of the defendants. Plaintiff forgets that he was the one who started talking in terms of percentages — and over a claim exaggerated by an admitted $2,250 plus, as he now emphasizes in another connection, an “uncontradicted” $3,280. This meant that plaintiff claimed 31 percent more than he was entitled to. Now plaintiff, having asked for and received a percentage of an admittedly excessive claim, complains when defendants seek to examine it realistically.
When the issue is damages and a plaintiff wants to claim obstinacy, it behooves him not to ask too much. Plaintiff’s apparent thought that the district court’s discretion is virtually unlimited reads too much into Pan American World Airways, Inc. v. Ramos, 1 Cir., 1966, 357 F.2d 341.
The error was more substantial than this. One of the defendants is a bank, a possible wrongdoer, but with no personal interest. Funds concededly belonging to the decedent were allowed by the bank to be deposited in the name of the sister, and by her withdrawn. Even if this was contrary to the decedent’s original instructions to his sister, which we cannot know, at least to the extent that the sister thereafter properly applied the funds the bank was not liable. The sister claimed that she properly applied them all. The plaintiff, admittedly incorrectly, filed a complaint in which he alleged she properly applied none. It could not be obstinate for the bank to await a settlement of the differences between the main parties, a dispute to which the bank could contribute no information.
The order setting aside the verdict of the jury is affirmed. The other actions of the district court are vacated and the cause is remanded for a new trial.
. The sister was not permitted to testify what decedent’s instructions had been. How the district court, which excluded this evidence, considered the instructions to be “hearsay” we cannot imagine.
. The defendants claim that the jury could have reached its result by accepting some of the $5,530 figure and rejecting the rest. The various items making up the $5,530 were set forth in an exhibit. Given the plaintiff’s acknowledged receipt of $2,250, no selection could be made which would justify the jury’s figure.
. In all fairness to plaintiff’s counsel we do not suggest that his approach is unique. We are spending the time on this matter for the very reason that we think what occurred in this case was not unique, and we feel it should be corrected.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1