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:
BLAZEK v. X-L REFRIGERATING CO. et al.
No. 4267.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
June 10, 1930.
Samuel W. Banning, of Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
C. Paul Parker and Earl C. Carlson, both of Chicago, 111., for appellees.
Before ALSCHULER and EVANS, Circuit Judges, and LINDLEY, District Judge.
EVANS, Circuit Judge.
This appeal is from a decree dismissing appellant’s suit brought to recover damages arising out of the alleged infringement of patent No. 1,553,846, dated September 15, 1915, and covering a refrigerating system. Appellees’ defenses were built on alleged noninfringement and invalidity. To support their claim of invalidity, appellees assert (a) that the invention was anticipated, (b) prior public use, and (e) that tho inventor, Blazek, obtained his ideas respecting the invention from one Bloom, who was the inventor, if the structure was in fact patentable.
Tho cause was referred to a master who found that the defense of prior public use was not established, hut that the structure embodied in claim 5, the only one in issue, did not, in view of the prior art, constitute invention. Upon exceptions to the master’s report, the cause was presented to the district judge who found not only that the patent was invalid for want of patentable novelty over the prior art, hut also that the patent was not infringed if valid.
In our opinion, tho defense of invalidity for want of patentable novelty is the only one that requires consideration.
In his specifications patentee says that his system is one “which utilizes jets of cold brine or other refrigerating medium for the purpose of cooling the air within the compartment wherein perishable articles are stored, and for the purpose of establishing air currents which will tend to withdraw the warmer air from the upper portions of the chamber or compartment, and, after cooling the same, recirculate the air hack to the starting point.”
It “is peculiarly adapted for use in the construction' of refrigerating display counters, in that it permits the use of the entire upper portion of the counter for display purposes, and obviates the necessity for providing ice chambers, or the like, which will interfere with the display of goods and are otherwise objectionable, since they frequently interfere with easy access to the goods on display.”
Claim 5 reads:
“In a refrigerating counter, a structure having means for dividing it into a relatively high and capacious display compartment for the housing of perishable articles, and a relatively low and restricted' underlying spraying space, said spraying space being in communication at each end with the overlying display compartment through air upflow and downflow passages respectively, a spraying pipe adapted to discharge into tho spraying space and located in proximity to the down-flow air passage, and provided on the side fronting the spraying space with a discharge opening toward said space adapted to direct the flow of a jet of cooling liquid beneath the base of tho display compartment to induce air currents through the relatively restricted spraying space and upwardly through the air upflow passage toward which the jet is directed and to cause said air currents to return through the downflow air passage, the base of the spraying space being provided with a drain passage, a brine cooling tank in communication with said drain passage, and a pump in communication on its intake side with tho brine tank and on its discharge side with the spray pipe, and means for operating the pump, substantially as described.”
Two patents, one to Gardner and one to Moorehead, are enlightening. The latter covered a refrigerator showcase of several compartments. It is for the display of moats, vegetables, etc. The upper compartment was the display ease. Another compartment, somewhat smaller and located below, held a cake of ice. Adjacent to this lower compartment and opening into it was one containing an electrically operated fan which drove the air from the ice compartment up through an opening leading to the display compartment, across it, and down an opening in the floor of the same compartment on the opposite side. Tho Gardner patent also covers refrigerating apparatus necessitating the use of compartments and the propelling of air cooled by .sprays of chilled brine driven by a motor through nozzles. It differs from the patent in suit in two respects. First, its cooling chamber is located at the top while Blazek’s 'is at the bottom of the counter. Likewise," it was not intended for a display counter, but merely refrigeration.
Both structures, however, broadly speaking, made use of compartments, one to store the meat to be displayed and one for holding the cooling material. Each used a motor to drive cooled salt brine through sprays thereby cooling the air and forcing this chilled air through an opening or air passageway in the wall that separates the two compartments and over and across the food and out another air passageway at the opposite end of the food compartment and back to the starting place. Appellant, it is true, has this latter apartment divided, into two separate eompartmehts* one above the other. This is an immaterial difference, however, and one that appellant cannot insist upon, for appellees’ structure differs from appellant’s in that it has but one compartment for its cooling and spraying devices.
If- Gardner’s structure was turned upside down, we would have appellant’s struetitre. The district court held that because appellees’ system did not have the three compartments it did not infringe. But setting this distinction to one side as nonessential, we have in Gardner’s system inverted, the appellant’s structure. Appellant, by this structure, placed his compartment holding the food at the top. Gardner had no such thought but merely sought to 'cool the food. To relocate the compartment holding thémeat and place it at the top of the counter so that it eould be used as a display counter, and place the spraying compartment below instead of above, the compartment containing the meat, did not, in our opinion, constitute invention.
The decree is
Affirmed..

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: 0