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:
JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. Ray MARSHALL, Secretary of Labor, and Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, Respondents.
Nos. 80-1106, 80-1330.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
Submitted Under Third Circuit Rule 12(6) Nov. 4, 1980.
Decided Nov. 13, 1980.
Anthony J. Steinmeyer, Marleigh Dover Lang, Appellate Staff, Civ. Div., U. S. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D. C., for OSHRC.
John C. Unkovic, Richard R. Nelson, II, Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay, Pittsburgh, Pa., for petitioner; James R. Haggerty, Pittsburgh, Pa., of counsel.
Carin A. Clauss, Sol. of Labor, Benjamin W. Mintz, Assoc. Solicitor for OSHRC, Allen H. Feldman, Counsel for Appellate Litigation, John A. Bryson, Asst. Counsel for Appellate Litigation, Washington, D. C., Marshall Harris, Regional Sol., Philadelphia, Pa., Ann D. Nachbar, U. S. Dept, of Labor, Washington, D. C., for respondents.
Before ADAMS and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges, and KNOX, District Judge.
Honorable William W. Knox, United States District Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation.
OPINION OF THE COURT
ADAMS, Circuit Judge.
The question in these petitions for review of citations issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission is whether petitioner Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation committed a “repeated” violation of a safety standard, within the meaning of § 666(a) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, 29 U.S.C. § 666(a) (1976).
In March, 1978, Jones & Laughlin was found to be in violation of a general regulation requiring equipment to be repaired promptly, because several cranes at its Aliquippa Works had worn gears, broken gear teeth, or were poorly aligned. Two citations were issued, and each violation was determined to be “repeated” on the basis of a single citation previously entered against Jones & Laughlin regarding the same facility. The proposed penalty for each “repeated” violation was $180.
Jones & Laughlin challenged the two current citations, and a hearing was held before an Administrative Law Judge. The Administrative Law Judge recognized that under the law of this Circuit, as expressed in Bethlehem Steel Corp. v. OSHRC, 540 F.2d 157 (3d Cir. 1976), Jones & Laughlin had not committed “repeated” violations. In Bethlehem Steel we declared that two violations of a safety standard could not form the basis of a citation for a “repeated” violation; rather, we held that several instances indicating a flouting of OSHA standards were necessary to establish a predicate for a finding of repeated violations. The Administrative Law Judge expressly declined to follow the law of this Circuit, and ruled instead on the basis of the Commission’s differing interpretation of § 666(a) that had been advanced in Potlach Corp., [1979] OSHD ¶ 23,294 (CCH). Potlach held that a violation was “repeated” if the employer had previously been cited for a single substantially similar infraction.
In this appeal the Secretary concedes that Bethlehem Steel controls the present case, and that the Administrative Law Judge’s finding of a “repeated” violation must therefore be reversed. The standard announced in Bethlehem Steel for measuring whether OSHA violations are “repeated” is binding on all tribunals and litigants in the Third Circuit, as well as on federal administrative agencies when they deal with matters within the jurisdiction of this Court. Thus, when assessing the conduct of employers within our purview, the Secretary must adhere to the interpretation, of § 666(a) adopted in Bethlehem Steel. In such a situation the agency is not free to apply its own view of the statute in contravention of the precedent of this Court. Allegheny General Hospital v. NLRB, 608 F.2d 965 (3d Cir. 1979); Babcock & Wilcox Co. v. OSHRC, 622 F.2d 1160, 1161 (3d Cir. 1980).
Accordingly, the Commission’s determination that petitioner violated the Occupational Safety and Health Act will be affirmed. Pursuant to the agreement of the parties, the Commission’s judgment that these violations are “repeated” is vacated, and the proceedings will be remanded with instructions to reduce the characterization of the violations from “repeated” to “nonserious,” and to reduce the penalty from $180 to $90 in each proceeding.
. As the Secretary recognizes, we remain bound by our decision in Bethlehem Steel unless that case is overturned by the Court in banc, or until the Supreme Court chooses to resolve the conflicting interpretations of § 666(a) adopted by the Fourth and Ninth Circuits. See George Hyman Constr. Co. v. OSHRC, 582 F.2d 834 (4th Cir. 1978); Todd Shipyards Corp. v. Secretary, 566 F.2d 1327 (9th Cir. 1977) (rejecting the view of this Court and following an interpretation consistent with the position of OSHRC in Potlach).

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