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 "groups and associations". 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:
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION, INC., Intervenor-Appellant, v. HONEYWELL, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SPERRY RAND CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 71-1531.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted April 11,1972.
Decided May 3, 1972.
Jerome F. Fallon, Timothy L. Tilton, Dawson, Tilton, Fallon & Lungmus, Chicago, Ill., for intervenor-appellant.
Frank Claybourne, Doherty, Rumble & Butler, St. Paul, Minn., H. Francis DeLone, Harvey Bartle, III, Dechert, Price & Rhoads, Philadelphia, Pa., Thomas M. Ferrill, Jr., Blue Bell, Pa., for appellees, Sperry Rand Corp. and Ill. Scientific Developments, Inc.
Before VAN OOSTERHOUT, ME-HAFFY and STEPHENSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This is a timely appeal by Iowa State University Research Foundation, Inc. (ISURF) from an order, 54 F.R.D. 594, denying it a right to intervene in litigation pending between Honeywell, Inc., and Sperry Rand Corporation, et ah, relating to the validity and infringement of Patent No. 3,120,606 issued to Eckert and Mauehly, inventors, and assigned to Illinois Scientific Developments, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sperry Rand.
The patent, issued February 4, 1964, involves a high speed, large scale digital computer known as the ENIAC computer. The Honeywell suit was commenced on May 26, 1967. Extensive discovery proceedings were engaged in during the next three and one-half years. Many depositions were taken; over 30,000 exhibits were identified. Honeywell’s brief, setting forth its factual and legal claims, contains 1,167 pages. Trial commenced on June 1, 1971.
ISURF on July 21, 1971, a month and one-half after the commencement of the trial on the merits, filed a motion for leave to intervene under Rule 24(a), Fed.R.Civ.P., tendering a petition raising the issue that John V. Atanasoff was a joint inventor of Patent No. 3,120,606 (along with Eckert and Mauehly) and seeking an order to correct the patent record under 35 U.S.C.A. § 256 to show Atanasoff to be a joint inventor. ISURF is assignee of Atana-soff’s rights in the patent. ISURF and its assignor have been aware of this litigation since shortly after the inception of this action in 1967.
Sperry Rand vigorously opposed the intervention, asserting that the intervention raises an entirely new issue, to wit, that Atanasoff was a co-inventor and that to fairly investigate and present evidence on this issue will acquire investigation, discovery and a considerable amount of time and will disrupt the complex and lengthy trial in progress and cause indeterminable delay. Honeywell employed Atanasoff to assist it in a defense that the patent was derived from Atanasoff. Honeywell made no contention that the patent was a joint one of Atanasoff, Eckert and Mauehly. Honeywell took a neutral position on the intervention.
Judge Larson, after affording the parties a full hearing on the motion for leave to intervene, on August 4, 1971, entered an order denying leave to intervene. The unreported memorandum opinion properly sets out the applicable law and the findings upon which the denial is based. Included in such opinion is the following:
“In the instant case intervenor knew about the lawsuit long before it made any effort to intervene. Intervention has been requested after all discovery is complete and, indeed, after Mr. Atanasoff has testified. It seems unwise to this Court in a case of this magnitude to permit at such a late date the intrusion of additional issues. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for counsel to modify the conduct of the trial to encompass the additional issues. Any efforts to conduct additional discovery and to recall witnesses would result in substantial delay and might very well interfere with the orderly presentation of evidence in the present parties’ primary cases. Under such circumstances it is the opinion of this Court that the motion by Iowa State University Research Foundation to intervene in this matter must be denied.”
The opening clause of Rule 24(a) dealing with intervention of right reads “Upon timely application. . ” An application for intervention whether asserted as a matter of right or judicial discretion must be timely. Lumbermens Mutual Cas. Co. v. Rhodes, 10 Cir., 403 F.2d 2, 5; Janousek v. Wells, 8 Cir., 303 F.2d 118, 122; Kap-lan v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, W.D.Mo., 231 F.Supp. 874, 876-877.
As stated in Kozak v. Wells, 8 Cir., 278 F.2d 104, 109, “Timeliness is to be determined from all the circumstances shown.”
The application for leave to intervene was filed more than four years after the commencement of the action and after extensive discovery had been completed, and after the trial on the merits had proceeded for one and one-half months. The reason asserted by ISURF for its belated effort to intervene is that its right to relief is based on the decision of the Fourth Circuit in Iowa State University Research Foundation, Inc., v. Sperry Rand Corp., 444 F.2d 406, decided June 22, 1971. That case involves a separate and distinct patent from the one here involved, but presents a claim for the same basic relief here sought by the intervenor. No issue of timeliness of the intervention is raised in the Fourth Circuit case. The reported opinion reflects that ISURF raised by intervention in the trial court the same basic issue it raises in its proposed intervention here. It is apparent from the Fourth Circuit case that ISURF knew of its potential rights here asserted long before the present trial on the merits commenced. No valid reason appears why ISURF could not have asserted its right to intervene at a much earlier time.
We are abundantly satisfied that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying ISURF’s untimely application for leave to intervene. The judgment is affirmed upon the basis stated by Judge Larson in his well-considered memorandum opinion, 54 F.R.D. 593.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1