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:
Hans HUB, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SUN VALLEY CO., et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 81-3024.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted June 7, 1982.
Decided July 27, 1982.
E. Lee Schlender, Ketchum, Idaho, for plaintiff-appellant.
Louis H. Cosho, Boise, Idaho, argued, for defendants-appellees; Carl P. Burke, Boise, Idaho, on the brief.
Before CHOY, TANG and BOOCHEVER, Circuit Judges.
CHOY, Circuit Judge:
Hans Hub appeals from the judgment against his claims that his former employer, Sun Valley Co., discriminated against him on account of his national origin. The record as it stands contains ample evidence to support the district court’s holding. Hub contends, however, that the court violated Fed.R.Civ.P. 32(a) by refusing to admit a deposition filed in a prior state action between Hub and Sun Valley’s predecessor-in-interest. The deposition allegedly contains testimony that Sun Valley decided not to rehire Hub because he filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The deposition constitutes Hub’s best evidence of retaliation in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a), and we cannot say that its exclusion, if improper, was harmless error.
We thus must determine whether the district court applied Rule 32(a) correctly. The Rule states in relevant part:
[W]hen an action has been brought in any court of the United States or of any State and another action involving the same subject matter is afterward brought between the same parties or their representatives or successors in interest, all depositions lawfully taken and duly filed in the former action may be used in the latter as if originally taken therefor.
Because Hub has not shown that the two lawsuits involved sufficiently similar issues, we affirm.
I
The decision whether to admit a deposition from a prior lawsuit is vested in the district court’s sound discretion. First National Bank in Greenwich v. National Airlines, 22 F.R.D. 46, 49 (S.D.N.Y.1958). See Reeg v. Shaughnessy, 570 F.2d 309, 317 (10th Cir. 1978) (concerning depositions in general); United States v. Bowen, 411 F.2d 923, 927 (5th Cir. 1969) (same). Depositions can save the time, effort and money of litigants, and help expedite trials. See Baldwin-Montrose Chemical Co. v. Rothberg, 37 F.R.D. 354, 356 (S.D.N.Y.1964); First National Bank in Greenwich v. National Airlines, 22 F.R.D. at 49. Because the underlying objective is efficiency at trial without jeopardizing accurate fact finding, the district court is usually in the best position to decide whether a prior deposition should be admitted. If the district court applies the correct legal standards, we will not normally substitute our judgment on the admissibility of a prior deposition.
II
Rule 32(a) requires that the prior and present lawsuits involve the “same subject matter” and “the same parties or their representatives or successors in interest.” These requirements have been construed liberally in light of the twin goals of fairness and efficiency. The accepted inquiry focuses on whether the prior cross-examination would satisfy a reasonable party who opposes admission in the present lawsuit. Consequently, courts have required only a substantial identity of issues, George R. Whitten, Jr., Inc. v. State University Construction Fund, 359 F.Supp. 1037, 1039 (D.Mass.1973), aff’d, 493 F.2d 177 (1st Cir. 1974); Fullerform Continuous Pipe Corp. v. American Pipe and Construction Co., 44 F.R.D. 453, 455-56 (D.Ariz.1968); Hertz v. Graham, 23 F.R.D. 17, 22 (S.D.N.Y.1958), vacated in part on other grounds, 292 F.2d 443 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 929, 82 S.Ct. 366, 7 L.Ed.2d 192 (1961), and the presence of an adversary with the same motive to cross-examine the deponent, Ikerd v. Lapworth, 435 F.2d 197, 205 (7th Cir. 1970); George R. Whitten, Jr., Inc. v. State University Construction Fund, 359 F.Supp. at 1039; Copeland v. Petroleum Transit Co., 32 F.R.D. 445,447 (E.D.S.C.1963); First National Bank in Greenwich v. National Airlines, 22 F.R.D. 46, 51 (S.D.N.Y.1958); Hertz v. Graham, 23 F.R.D. at 20.
We too believe that the two lawsuits need not involve identical issues and parties, though we reserve for another day deciding whether the presence of an adversary with the same motive to cross-examine is sufficient. In this case, the party opposing admission is the successor-in-interest to the party who cross-examined the deponent. Rule 32(a) explicitly allows a prior deposition to be used against a successor-in-interest.
The shortcoming here is that Hub failed to show that the deposition relates to issues common to both lawsuits. Hub offered the deposition below to show that Sun Valley decided not to rehire him in retaliation for his filing a complaint with the EEOC. The prior lawsuit, however, was brought in state court by Sun Valley’s predecessor against Hub, and concerned events that occurred subsequent to the decision not to rehire him. Hub has not shown that retaliation for his filing the EEOC complaint was at issue there, or that Sun Valley’s predecessor had any reason to cross-examine the deponent about the alleged retaliation. If Hub had taken the deposition for the present lawsuit, of course Sun Valley would have carefully questioned the deponent about any comment suggesting retaliation. It would be unfair to bind Sun Valley by the prior cross-examination which did not cover the issue of retaliation. Therefore, we agree with the district court that Hub has not shown that the deposition relates to issues which are sufficiently similar in the two lawsuits to satisfy Rule 32(a).
AFFIRMED.
Wigmore defends the adequacy of an adversary with the same motive to cross-examine on the ground that “where the interest of the person was calculated to induce equally as thorough a testing by cross-examination, then the present opponent has had adequate protection for the same end.” 5 Wigmore on Evidence § 1388 (4th ed. 1940). A number of the cases cited in the prior paragraph above adopt Wigmore’s test. We, however, find it troubling. Not only does the test disregard the “same parties” requirement in Rule 32(a), but it also fails to take into account the possibility that the prior opponent mishandled the cross-examination. When that has happened, we question whether the deposition should be admitted against a party who did not participate in the cross-examination. Our purpose here is not to resolve this issue. Instead, we want to make clear only that our citing cases that adopt Wigmore’s test does not mean that we adopt it.

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