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:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the GARFIELD HEIGHTS CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT and James A. Harper, Superintendent, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 77-3012.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Aug. 7, 1978.
Frederick M. Coleman, U. S. Atty., Cleveland, Ohio, Edward H. Levi, Atty. Gen. of U. S., Judith E. Wolf, Appellate Sect., Civil Rights Div., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff-appellant.
John F. Lewis, John T. Meredith, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, Cleveland, Ohio, for defendants-appellees.
ORDER
Before EDWARDS, ENGEL and MERRITT, Circuit Judges.
ORDER
The issue presented by this appeal is whether the Attorney General has the authority to bring pattern or practice equal employment suits under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act against public employers in the absence of a referral of the case by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the Attorney General for the institution of suit.
Prior to the 1972 Civil Rights Act amendment, the Attorney General had independent authority to bring equal employment cases against private employers under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act without a referral from the EEOC. Prior to the 1972 amendments, neither the Attorney General nor the EEOC had authority over public employers. The 1972 Civil Rights Amendment transferred much of the Attorney General's authority under Title VII to the EEOC and conditioned the institution of pattern or practice cases against private employers on a referral from the EEOC. At the same time the 1972 amendments gave the EEOC investigatory and conciliation authority in connection with Title VII equal employment cases involving public or governmental employers.
The 1972 amendments are unclear and ambiguous with respect to the question whether the Attorney General obtained independent pattern or practice authority under Title VII against public employers while losing such authority in the case of private employers.
We conclude that this question of statutory interpretation should be resolved against the position of the Attorney General that he has independent pattern or practice authority against public employers in the absence of a referral from the EEOC for the reasons set out by District Judge Thomas in his Memorandum Opinion filed October 4, 1976, 435 F.Supp. 949 (1976) and for the reasons set out in the Opinion of the three judge District Court in the case of United States v. State of South Carolina, 445 F.Supp. 1094, 1110-11 (D.So.Car.1977). This conclusion is buttressed by the action of the Supreme Court in summarily affirming on appeal the decision of the three judge District Court in South Carolina, 434 U.S. 1026, 98 S.Ct. 756, 54 L.Ed.2d 775 (1978). While the question is not entirely free from doubt, we believe that the Supreme Court necessarily affirmed the conclusion of the three judge District Court in South Carolina that the Attorney General’s former independent pattern or practice authority under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including his new authority to bring such suits against public employers granted by the 1972 amendments thereto, did not survive the 1972 amendments and that referral by the EEOC to the Attorney General is necessary prior to the institution of such suits.
Accordingly, the judgment of the District Court is hereby 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