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 "natural persons". 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:
Theodore D. BUHL, and Anastasia R. Buhl, his wife, Appellants, v. A. M. MENNINGER, Director of Internal Revenue, Detroit, Michigan, Appellee.
No. 13280.
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.
Jan. 23, 1958.
John R. Starrs, Detroit, Mich., and Wurzer, Higgins & Starrs, Detroit, Mich., on the brief, for appellants.
Sheldon I. Fink, Washington, D. C., and Charles K. Rice, John N. Stull, Harry Baum, Walter R. Gelles, Washington, D. C., Frederick W. Kaess, Detroit, Mich., on the brief, for appellee.
Before MARTIN, McALLISTER, and MILLER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Appellants filed an action against the District Director of Internal Revenue, claiming that his denial of their petition for refund of taxes theretofore illegally paid to his predecessor in office was arbitrary and capricious. Upon the dismissal of their complaint by the district court, they appealed.
The District Director’s predecessor, who collected the taxes, had died before the suit was commenced.
In Sage v. United States, 250 U.S. 33, 39 S.Ct. 415, 63 L.Ed. 828, it was held that a suit against a Collector is personal; and that, at the time judgment is entered, the United States is a stranger to the suit. The personal remedy against the Collector is said to derive from the common law action of indebitatus assumpsit, and is drawn from the conception that the Collector was personally responsible for illegally exacting monies under the claim that they were due as taxes. In United States v. Kales, 314 U.S. 186, 62 S.Ct. 214, 86 L.Ed. 132, the court said that notwithstanding the provisions for indemnifying the Collector and protecting him from execution, the nature and extent of the right asserted, and the measure of recovery, remained the same. Moreover, the court observed that Moore Ice Cream Co. v. Rose, 289 U.S. 373, 53 S.Ct. 620, 77 L.Ed. 1265, had not, as here contended by appellants, affected the course of decisions based upon the doctrine of the Sage case.
Under the rule laid down by the cited cases, it follows that it was the payment to the predecessor of the present Director of Internal Revenue, and not the denial of refund by the present Director, that gives rise to the cause of action.
Appellants allude to the statement of Mr. Justice Holmes in Blackstone v. Miller, 188 U.S. 189, 206, 23 S.Ct. 277, 279, 47 L.Ed. 439, that “When logic and the policy of a state conflict with a fiction, * * * the fiction must give way”; and to Mr. Justice Cardozo’s observation in Moore Ice Cream Co. v. Rose, supra, [289 U.S. 373, 53 S.Ct. 623] that “A suit against a collector who has collected a tax in the fulfillment of ministerial duty is today an anomalous relic of bygone modes of thought.” These are cogent observations; but, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter said in United States v. Nunnally Investment Co., 316 U.S. 258, 260, 62 S.Ct. 1064, 1065, 86 L.Ed. 1455, “Although recognition has been made of the technical nature of a suit against a collector, no. support can be found for the contention that the Sage doctrine has been discarded as an anachronism. On the contrary, the rule has been reaffirmed in an unbroken line of authority.” “It is not to be supposed that a stranger to an unwarranted transaction is made answerable for it; yet that might be the result of the suit if it could be brought against a successor to the colleetorship.” Smietanka v. Indiana Steel Co., 257 U.S. 1, 4, 42 S.Ct. 1, 2, 66 L.Ed. 99.
If the allegations of the complaint are true, and in this proceeding, they must be so accepted, appellants have suffered serious damage by the wrongful collection of money which has been turned over to the United States. They contend that if the courts sustain the judgment, the damage will have been caused to them by a fiction and an anachronism. But, as the Supreme Court said in the Nunnally case, “If the doctrine of the Sage case is now to be abandoned, such a determination of policy in the administration of the income tax law should be made by Congress, which maintains a Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation charged with the duty of investigating the operation of the federal revenue laws and recommending such legislation as may be deemed desirable.” 316 U.S. at page 264, 62 S.Ct. at page 1067.
It is to be remarked that appellants could have sued the United States directly for refund of the taxes in question. But that is not now pertinent, since the statute of limitations governing the filing of such an action has expired.
In accordance with the foregoing, the judgment entered by Judge Thornton in the district court is affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 2