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:
AR-EX PRODUCTS CO., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. CAPITAL VITAMIN & COSMETIC CORP., Defendant, Appellee.
No. 6554.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
Heard Oct. 5, 1965.
Decided Oct. 29, 1965.
Frank L. Kozol, Boston, Mass., with whom Lee H. Kozol, Thomas J. Ahern, Jr., and Friedman, Atherton, Sisson & Kozol, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellant.
Herbert D. Lewis, Boston, Mass., for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, Mc-ENTEE, Circuit Judge, and WYZAN-SKI, District Judge.
ALDRICH, Chief Judge.
This case presents the narrow question whether plaintiff-appellant, a manufacturer who under local law could otherwise enforce fair trade agreements against a nonsigner, General Electric Co. v. Kimball Jewelers, Inc., 1956, 333 Mass. 665, 132 N.E.2d 652, is precluded from so doing because as a matter of regular procedure it replied to individuals inquiring as to the availability of its goods not only with information about local retail outlets, but with offers to sell directly to them in retail quantities.
Although plaintiff’s power to bind signers and nonsigners to the terms of a fair trade agreement is created by local law, it can do so only by virtue of an exception to the fundamental federal policy that “[e]very contract * * * in restraint of trade or commerce * * * is declared to be illegal * * 15 U.S.C. § 1. The Miller-Tydings amendment to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, and the McGuire amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45, permit resale price maintenance agreements provided, inter alia, they are not “ * * * between retailers, or between persons, firms, or corporations in competition with each other.” 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 45(a) (5). The district court held that since plaintiff was “in competition with the retail druggists with whom it has made its resale price maintenance contracts * * it was precluded by this proviso from claiming the fair trade exemption to the antitrust laws. Plaintiff appeals.
Plaintiff contends that it was not in competition with retail druggists because, as the court in substance found, its offers to sell in retail quantities were never accepted. We hold, however, that for purposes of the Miller-Tydings and McGuire Acts, hereinafter the act, a manufacturer is “in competition” with retailers if he holds himself out as selling his products to consumers in the same market in retail quantities, regardless of the success vel non of his retail operations.
Whether or not plaintiff possesses all of the characteristics of a “retailer,” as used in the act this term and the phrase “in competition with each other” are separate concepts, either of which is sufficient to negative the act’s protection against an otherwise illegal contract. Esso Standard Oil Co. v. Secatore’s, Inc., 1 Cir., 1957, 246 F.2d 17, cert. den. 355 U.S. 834, 78 S.Ct. 54, 2 L.Ed.2d 46; Johnson & Johnson v. Avenue Merchandise Corp., fn. 2, supra. The strength of the national policy favoring free competition requires that the act be construed against parties seeking the benefit of its exceptions. United States v. McKesson & Robbins, Inc., 1956, 351 U.S. 305, 316, 76 S.Ct. 937, 100 L.Ed. 1209. Certainly in one meaning, “in competition” refers to the seeking of the same customers without regard to the success of the endeavor.
It has been suggested that the very circumstance that a manufacturer’s attempts to sell to retail customers are ineffectual might encourage it to insulate itself “from the inroads of more efficient operators by setting its ‘fair trade’ prices higher than otherwise.” Protection of this sort seems clearly outside the purpose of the fair trade laws. However that may be, the principle advocated by the plaintiff would give a manufacturer who seeks to sell in retail quantities an undue advantage. Even if it might be possible it would scarcely be practical for a small local retailer to ascertain currently the success of a manufacturer’s mail order solicitation. We do not believe that plaintiff, the party seeking relief, and sitting, so to speak, with a closed hand, should place the burden upon the defendant to discover whether it is a good one. If plaintiff’s apparent competition is so ineffectual as not to be real it can readily give it up. To seek to enjoin the defendant while it continues its own endeavors falls little short of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.
Affirmed.
. Strictly speaking we are concerned only with the McGuire Act, since the former is inapplicable to the nonsigner provisions of state laws. Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 1951, 341 U.S. 384, 71 S.Ct. 745, 95 L.Ed. 1035. However, in the parts relevant to this decision, the statutes are identical.
. See discussion in Johnson & Johnson v. Avenue Merchandise Corp., S.D.N.Y., 1961, 193 F.Supp. 282.
. This quotation is taken from an argument referred to in United States v. McKesson & Robbins, Inc., supra, at 315 n. 20, 76 S.Ct. 937, but which the court did not pass upon.

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