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.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

Opinion:
Emmett J. STEBBINS, Appellant, v. NATIONWIDE MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY et al., Appellees.
No. 72-1061.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Nov. 8, 1972.
Emmett J. Stebbins, pro se, on brief. E. Waller Dudley, Alexandria, Va., and Joseph M. Roulhac, Smith, Somerville & Case, Baltimore, Md., on brief, for ap-pellees.
William A. Carey, Gen. Counsel, John de J. Pemberton, Deputy Gen. Counsel, Julia P. Cooper, Chief, Appellate Section, and Gerald R. Lopez, Atty., E.E. O.C., on brief, for amicus curiae, Equal Employment Opportunity Comm.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and RUSSELL and FIELD, Circuit Judges.
. The plaintiff filed this as an individual as well as a class action. Both the EEOC, which filed an amicus brief, and the defendant contended the plaintiff was not an appropriate party for a class action. The plaintiff did not apparently press his class action and the District Court never made any determination that the action was maintainable as a class action, a determination which must be made as a predicate for the prosecution of a class action. See Buie 23(c)(1), Federal Buies of Civil Procedure; and cf., Wright and Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, vol. 7A, p. 134-5 (1972).
PER CURIAM:
Upon consideration of the entire record herein, we are of opinion the result reached by the District Court and the judgment entered by it are correct.
It might be noted, further, that plaintiff does not appear to have begun his action in the District Court within the time limited by statute for the institution of such action. The claim of discrimination asserted by the plaintiff in his letter of May 13, 1968 to the EEOC, which is the basis of this action and which involved a denial of employment at the Falls Church, Virginia, branch of the defendant, resulted in a “suit letter” received by the plaintiff on July 25, 1968. Section 2000e-5(e), 42 U.S.C., fixes the time limit for suit after receipt of such “suit letter” as “within thirty days thereafter”. Unless tolled on recognized equitable grounds, this time limitation “must be strictly adhered to” and “Remedies for resulting inequities are to be provided by Congress, not the courts.” Goodman v. City Products Corp., Ben Franklin Div. (6th Cir. 1970) 425 F.2d 702, 704, quoting from Kavanagh v. Noble (1947) 332 U.S. 535, 68 S.Ct. 235, 92 L.Ed. 150, which concerned a similar provision in the tax law. The plaintiff did not file this action until almost 17 months after the receipt of his “suit letter”. Not only was his action not thus timely filed, there was no basis for tolling on recognized equitable grounds.
It is true plaintiff did file an action on this charge in the District Court of the District of Columbia almost immediately after he had filed his complaint with the EEOC and before any “suit letter” was issued. The District of Columbia action, however, fitted none of the situations under which venue was authorized in Section 2000e-5(f). Subsequently, he requested and secured from the EEOC a “suit letter” and thus corrected this omission. But he made no effort to correct his error in venue, because he was not acting out of inadvertence or mistake; he purposely chose the District of Columbia because he sought to establish a precedent. The plaintiff is a uniquely sophisticated litigant in Title VII matters. By his own professions, he embarked in 1964 on a career of “litigating” under Title VII and, in 1966, focused particularly on insurance companies. He has filed some twelve eases charging racial discrimination against insurance companies, including three against the defendant. In connection with this litigation, he has often demonstrated what one Court has characterized as an “intentional, wilful and contemptuous” disregard of both Court and statutory rules and requirements. See Stebbins v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (1969) 134 U.S.App.D.C. 193, 413 F.2d 1100, 1102, cert. denied 396 U.S. 895, 90 S.Ct. 194, 24 L.Ed.2d 173 cf., Stebbins v. Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co. (4th Cir. 1967) 382 F.2d 267, cert. den. 390 U.S. 910, 88 S.Ct. 836, 19 L.Ed.2d 880. Plaintiff was thoroughly acquainted with the statutory provisions both as they fix time limitations on right to sue and fix venue. What he sought by filing his action in the District Court of Columbia was to establish the precedent that venue of a Title VII action was controlled not by the special venue provisions of Section 2000e-5(f) but by the general federal venue statute. To repeat; He was not proceeding upon any ignorance of, or even want of understanding of, Section 2000e-5(f); his was the intentional choice of disregarding the statutory provisions. Such disregard of the clear venue provisions of Title VII by one whose expertise is so well established as that of the plaintiff cannot operate to toll the statutory limitation upon right to sue.
Affirmed.
. Earlier in 1966, the plaintiff had sought employment at the Takoma Park, Maryland, branch of the defendant. He submitted an incomplete application and, when requested to supply additional information, he filed a complaint with the EEOC, which was referred to the Maryland Commission on Internal Problems. After a conference with the plaintiff and the defendant, the staff of the Maryland Commission on Internal Problems found the complaint to be without merit. The complaint was returned to the EEOO but was apparently not pressed further by the plaintiff and, for all essential purposes, seems to have been abandoned by the plaintiff. At any rate, no suit letter was ever issued with reference to this charge.
. See, also, to the same general effect: Pore v. Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company (D.C.N.C.1968) 293 F.Supp. 587, 588; King v. Georgia Power Company (D.C.Ga.1968) 295 F.Supp. 943, 946; Colbert v. H-K Corporation (D.C.Ga.1968) 295 F.Supp. 1091, 1093 (vacated on other grounds, (5th Cir.) 444 F.2d 1381).
. Two of those actions have resulted in appeals heard by this Court. Stebbins v. Nationwide Mnt. Insurance Co. (4th Cir. 1967) 382 F.2d 267, cert. den. 390 U.S. 910, 88 S.Ct. S36, 19 L.Ed.2d 880, and Stebbins v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, et al., No. 72-1335, decided Oct. 27, 1972. Three others were before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. See 134 U.S.App.D.C. 193, 413 F.2d 1100.
. In one of these actions, the Court considered the qualifications of the plaintiff for employment as a claim adjuster, which is the type of employment sought by him. The Court found that the plaintiff was “so lacking in elementary financial prudence, candor, stability and meaningful interest in the business world, and definite career direction that no prudent insurance company could reasonably offe$ to employ him in a position of fiscal trust * * Stebbins v. Insurance Co. of North America (D.D.C.1970), Civil Action #2848-69.

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?

Choices:
private business (including criminal enterprises)
private organization or association
federal government (including DC)
sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
government - level not ascertained
natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
miscellaneous
not ascertained

Answer: 0