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:
Edna L. DUGGINS, Appellee, v. COLONIAL STORES, INC., Appellant.
No. 8865.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued April 1, 1963.
Decided Sept. 23, 1963.
Norwood Robinson, Winston-Salem, N. C. (Hudson, Ferrell, Petree, Stockton, Stockton & Robinson, Winston-Salem, N. C., on brief), for appellant.
Eugene H. Phillips, Winston-Salem, N. C., for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH and BRYAN, Circuit Judges, and HARRY E. WATKINS, District Judge.
HAYNSWORTH, Circuit Judge.
We are concerned with the sufficiency of the evidence to support a verdict for the plaintiff who claimed damages for an injury she suffered when she fell in one of the defendant’s stores. We conclude that, under the laws of North Carolina, the evidence was insufficient and that judgment non obstante veredicto should have been entered for the defendant.
Mrs. Duggins, with her husband, was-shopping one evening in one of the defendant’s grocery stores. Her foot, slipped in an oily liquid on the floor, and she fell, sustaining some injury for which she seeks compensation.
There was no direct testimony as to how the liquid got on the floor or when. No witness could even state positively what it was. All agreed, however, that there was a puddle of liquid in the aisle at the moment of the fall' and broken pieces of a small bottle. The bottom of the broken bottle, however, was on the bottom shelf which protruded further into the aisle than the narrower upper shelves. From the shape of the neck of the broken bottle and the fact that they ascribed an odor of pine oil to the liquid, the plaintiff and her husband speculated that it was a Texize cleaner. Such cleaning agents were not stored in the area of the fall, but shampoos were stored on the upper shelves there, and a witness for the defense thought it was a bottle of Halo Shampoo that had been knocked off the shelf and broken.
For the defense, there was positive-testimony that the liquid was not on the-floor a few minutes earlier. The area had been dry-mopped with a disinfectant perfumed with pine oil approximately fifteen minutes earlier. The assistant manager testified he passed over the spot of the accident only three minutes before ■ its occurrence, and the floor was then, clean.
The plaintiff sought to create a basis, for an inference that the liquid had been. on the floor for some time by testimony that she and her husband smelled the odor of a disinfectant, detergent, cleanser or pine oil when they first entered the store "ten to fifteen minutes before the accident and the liquid on the floor had the same •or a similar odor. They testified, however, that the odor they noticed pervaded the entire store and did not vary in intensity. The plaintiff noticed the dry mop cleaning of the entire floor area, which was not completed until after her .arrival.
She also suggests that the fact that the bottom of the broken bottle was on the bottom shelf might support an inference that someone had moved it from the floor ■of the aisle to the shelf, but a bottle accidentally knocked from an upper shelf would normally hit the protruding bottom shelf and some of its broken parts would ;be expected to come to rest there.
In North Carolina, as elsewhere, a storekeeper may be held liable for injury sustained by a customer as the result of a hazardous condition created by the storekeeper, intentionally or negligently. Thus, in North Carolina, storekeepers have been held liable for injuries •caused by the presence on the floor in ■excessive quantities of such substances as wax placed there by the storekeeper. He may be liable if he neglects an opportunity to eliminate a hazardous condition created by another or to give warning of it, but here the North Carolina •courts have placed almost insuperable obstacles in the way of the usual plaintiff who has slipped upon or tripped over debris on the floor when the plaintiff cannot show that the storekeeper put it there. Frequently reiterating that the storekeeper is not an insurer, that his care need be only ordinary, and that he should not be held to a standard of care which would expose him to possible liability for accidental injuries, the Supreme Court of North Carolina has consistently held that a verdict for a plaintiff may not be predicated upon proof of the occurrence and the existence of the hazardous condition which caused it. This is true though the nature of the condition may suggest that it had existed for some time. Thus testimony that the plaintiff slipped in grease that “was dusty and dirty like it had been swept over” was held insufficient to support a finding that the grease had been there a sufficient length of time that the storekeeper, exercising ordinary care, should have discovered and removed it. Though a plaintiff was able to show that a manager did not make inspections he should have made, recovery was denied because of the absence of affirmative proof that the condition existed when the duty to inspect was neglected. Our own court, applying the law of North Carolina, held that a plaintiff who slipped on a step could not recover because evidence that a janitor with mop and bucket was nearby was insufficient to show that the step had been made slippery by recent mopping.
If the application of these principles in North Carolina suggests a solicitude more tender than need be for the economic health of her storekeepers, this case is far from the extremes of that application.
In an effort to avoid the effect of the usual principles governing such cases, the plaintiff first contends that the jury would have been warranted in finding that the storekeeper actually knew of the presence of the liquid and broken glass on the floor. She assumes that the bottle fell in the aisle and that all of its pieces came to rest on the floor. From the fact that the bottom of the bottle was on the bottom shelf, she then reasons that an employee of the store saw the liquid and the broken glass, picked up one of the broken pieces of glass and placed it on the shelf and then did no more about it. Of course, the premise is unestablished, and a bottle falling from an upper shelf normally would first hit the protruding bottom shelf rather than the aisle floor.
The plaintiff’s testimony about the odor she smelled upon entering the store is equally ineffective to support an inference that the liquid in which she later fell was then on the floor. There is no doubt that the cleaning of the store was still in progress when the plaintiff entered the store, for she observed it. That the odor came from the pine oil disinfectant used in the cleaning, as defense witnesses testified, is stoutly supported by the plaintiff’s testimony • that the odor pervaded the entire store and was no more intense in one place than another. If the source of the odor had been a liquid, spilled in one place, it would be expected that the odor would be concentrated in that area and less noticeable or undetectable over other odors in remote corners of the store.
Within the principles applied by North Carolina, we think the plaintiff failed to prove that the defendant placed the liquid on the floor or knew, or should have known, of its presence in time to have removed it or warned her of it. It follows that the judgment for the plaintiff cannot stand.
Reversed.
The late Judge HARRY E. WATKINS expressed his approval of the result of the foregoing opinion, but died before the opinion was prepared.
. See e. g., Bowden v. S. H. Kress & Co., 198 N.C. 559, 152 S.E. 625; Parker v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 201 N.C. 691, 161 S.E. 209; Anderson v. Reidsville Amusement Co., 213 N.C. 130, 195 S.E. 386; Lee v. H. L. Green & Co., 236 N.C. 83, 72 S.E.2d 33.
. See Boliannon v. Leonard-Fitzpatrick-Mueller Stores Co., 197 N.C. 755, 150 S. E. 356; Cooke v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 204 N.C. 495, 168 S.E. 679; Fox v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 209 N.C. 115, 182 S.E. 662; Brown v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 217 N.C. 368, 8 S.E.2d 199; Griggs v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 218 N.C. 166, 10 S.E.2d 623; Pratt v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 218 N.C. 732. 12 S.E.2d 242: Harris v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 230 N.C. 485, 53 S.E.2d 536.
. Griggs y. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 218 N.C. 166, 10 S.E.2d 623; Watkins v. Taylor Furnishing Company, 224 N.C. 674, 31 S.E.23 917.
. Griggs v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 218 N.C. 166, 10 S.E.2d 623.
. Pratt v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 218 N.C. 732, 12 S.E.2d 242.
. Revis v. Orr, 234 N.C. 158, 66 S.E.2d 652, 28 A.L.R.2d 609.
. Allison v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 4 Cir., 99 F.2d 507; and see Montgomery Ward & Company v. Bailey, 4 Cir., 271 F.2d 573; Mullen v. Winn-Dixie, 4 Cir., 252 F.2d 232.

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