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:
George S. JONAS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Edward J. STACK, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 83-5390.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
April 19, 1985.
Green, Eisenberg & Cohen, James K. Green, West Palm Beach, Fla., David M. Lipman, Miami, Fla., for plaintiff’s attorney Andrew Mavrides.
Price & Bryne, Alexander Cocalis, Chief Trial Counsel, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for defendants-appellees.
Before TJOFLAT and VANCE, Circuit Judges, and ATKINS , District Judge.
Honorable C. Clyde Atkins, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, sitting by designation.
VANCE, Circuit Judge:
This appeal requires us to determine whether an attorney who successfully prosecutes another attorney’s application for fees under the Civil Rights Attorneys’ Fees Awards Act (Act), 42 U.S.C. § 1988, may thereupon request compensation for his own services under the same statute. Although we conclude that such representation constitutes a service which may be compensable within the meaning of the Act, we also conclude that the award may be made only to counsel who actually represented the prevailing party. Accordingly, we dismiss this appeal because it and the fee request in the lower court were brought by fee counsel rather than counsel to the prevailing parties.
In April 1976, a Florida district court appointed Mr. Andrew Mavrides to represent the inmates of the Broward County Jail in their civil rights suit concerning confinement conditions. After six years of litigation, Mavrides filed a motion for $252,255.35 in attorney’s fees and costs pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The motion was accompanied by the required supporting memorandum and a detailed breakdown of Mavrides’ costs, expenses and time. The defendants filed a motion in response, acknowledging that Mavrides was entitled to some compensation but contending that the amount should be only $29,430 in fees and $90.80 in costs. The defendants also requested that the court hold an evidentiary hearing on the fee issue. Mavrides apparently concluded that he was unable to represent himself adequately in the face of this opposition, and without consulting the court hired Mr. James Green to prosecute his fee application. As a result of Green’s representation, Mavrides was awarded $89,850 in fees and $2,936.80 in costs. Later, Green filed a § 1988 fee application, purportedly in Mavrides’ name, seeking compensation for his services in representing Mavrides. The district court denied Green’s application with the following order:
THIS CAUSE having come before the Court on the motion of James K. Green for Attorney’s fees, and the Court having considered the record in this cause and being otherwise advised in the premises, ' it is
ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that said motion be, and it is hereby, DENIED. Mr. Green did not represent the plaintiff class but rather represented Mr. Mavrides.
Green, who now has hired a third lawyer to prosecute his claim, then filed an appeal in his own name asking us to reverse the district court’s order and to remand for appropriate proceedings to determine his reasonable fees and expenses.
This court has held that a prevailing party’s counsel is entitled to reasonable compensation when he litigates his own claim for entitlement to § 1988 fees. E.g., Johnson v. University College of the University of Alabama in Birmingham, 706 F.2d 1205, 1207 (11th Cir.1983); Johnson v. Mississippi, 606 F.2d 635, 637-39 (5th Cir. 1979). Mavrides, would, therefore, be entitled to reasonable compensation for all time reasonably spent had he litigated his own fee application. He chose, however, to hire Green to press his claim after it became clear that the defendants intended to oppose his application. The threshold issue is whether such representation constitutes a compensable service within the meaning of the Act. We join a number of other courts in concluding that it does. See Shadis v. Beal, 703 F.2d 71, 72-73 (3d Cir.1983); Grendel’s Den, Inc. v. Larkin, 582 F.Supp. 1220, 1231 (D.Mass.1984); Institutionalized Juveniles v. Secretary of Pub. Welfare, 568 F.Supp. 1020, 1034 (E.D. Pa.1983),
We are guided to this conclusion by an examination of the policy considerations underlying the Act. The Act’s primary function is to shift the costs of civil rights litigation from civil rights victims to civil rights violators. Dowdell v. City of Apopka, Florida, 698 F.2d 1181, 1189 (11th Cir. 1983). Its legislative history articulates two justifications for the cost-shifting mechanism. First, the mechanism affords civil rights victims effective access to the courts by making it financially feasible for them to challenge civil rights violations. Second, it provides an incentive for both citizens and members of the bar to act as “private attorneys general” to ensure effective enforcement of the civil rights laws. Id. (citing H.R.Rep. No. 1558, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 1 (1976) and S.Rep. No. 1011, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 1, 3 reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 5908, 5910).
We have recognized that the Act’s success in achieving its purposes depends on whether the cost-shifting mechanism reimburses costs and fees on a par with what the attorney would otherwise receive from fee-paying clients. Dowdell, 698 F.2d at 1190. Were we to institute an absolute ban on recovery for expenses incurred by a lawyer who finds it necessary to hire counsel to prosecute his fee application, the profitability of handling civil rights cases would be reduced, since he would then have to absorb an expense not generally associated with other types of litigation. If Green’s services were not compensable in this case, for example, Mavrides would have to pay Green’s fee out of his own pocket and his real income for handling the case would be reduced significantly. Such reduced profitability would in turn channel lawyers away from civil rights suits towards more remunerative types of litigation, thereby diminishing the enforcement of the civil rights laws and decreasing victims’ opportunity to gain redress. Id. Given this result, we find it more consistent with the goals of the Act to permit an attorney to be compensated for the costs reasonably incurred in hiring another to prosecute his fee application.
In reaching this conclusion we do not mean to imply that it is appropriate in every case for an attorney to hire counsel to prosecute his § 1988 fee application. On the contrary, we envision these cases to be the exception and not the rule. The propriety of passing any litigation costs on to the defendant under § 1988 remains subject to this circuit’s requirement that the costs be justified by the necessities of the case. Dowdell, 698 F.2d at 1191. Whether fee counsel’s services are justified in a particular instance remains within the sound discretion of the trial court.
We now turn our consideration to the issue of whether Green had standing to file the petition for attorney’s fees. He and his counsel are strangers to the litigation in the sense that they are neither parties nor attorneys of record for any party. The Act calls for awards to be made to a “prevailing party.” We can find nothing in the Act or its legislative history which suggests that Congress contemplated that an attorney who did not actually represent the prevailing party would be able to file a fee application on his own motion. We do not believe, therefore, that the meaning of the term “prevailing party” as it is used in the Act can be expanded to encompass an attorney who has no connection with the principal case aside from his prosecution of the fee issue. The proper procedure is for the attorney who benefits from the representation to supplement his own fee application to include the costs and expenses that he has incurred by retaining fee counsel. In this case, then, Mavrides is the proper individual to request compensation for Green’s expenses. We dismiss this appeal in light of Mr. Green’s lack of standing to file the motion for fees in the district court or to file an appeal to this court.
DISMISSED.
. The case had not reached final judgment at the time Mavrides filed his motion, but the court had entered numerous orders in the plaintiffs’ favor and had ruled for them on the basic issue of whether conditions in the jail met constitutional standards at the time of filing and during the pendency of the lawsuit.
. The accompanying memorandum dealt with the twelve factors of Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (5th Cir.1974), which must be considered in all fee cases in this circuit.
. The validity and amount of the award to Mavrides are not challenged.
. Green also asks us to require the district court to determine an appropriate award of fees and expenses for his lawyer on this appeal.
. We express no opinion as to whether Mavrides acted properly in hiring Green to represent him on the fee application. This determination is one properly left in the first instance to the trial court.
. Those attorneys who feel the need to hire counsel would be well-advised to raise the issue with the court prior to taking such action. Otherwise they run the risk that the trial court may determine that the necessities of the case did not justify retaining special fee counsel. We are unwilling, however, to make prior consultation with and approval by the trial court a prerequisite to recovery.
. Strict conformity to the language of the statute would require that the application be made by the attorney in the name of his client, the prevailing party. We consider this to be the procedure of choice, since it ensures that awards made under the Act compensate their intended beneficiaries. We are aware that in some instances courts have awarded attorney's fees to an individual attorney rather than to the prevailing party. See, e.g., Shadis v. Beal, 692 F.2d 924 (3rd Cir.1982); cf. Dennis v. Chang, 611 F.2d 1302, 1309 (9th Cir.1980). In these cases, however, the awarded fees compensated the attorney for services rendered directly to the prevailing party.

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: 99