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:
Nathaniel A. DENMAN, Appellant, v. Lawrence SHUBOW, Appellee.
No. 7302.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
Heard June 4, 1969.
Decided June 26, 1969.
Nathaniel A. Denman, pro se.
Appellee not appearing.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, Mc-ENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Plaintiff, Nathaniel Denman, appeals from an order of the district court denying reconsideration of a judgment dismissing his complaint for lack of prosecution. The complaint, an alleged civil rights action, was brought in December 1966. Throughout the proceedings in the district court and in this court plaintiff has appeared pro se. Also, he purports to represent his six minor children.
On March 25, 1968, the case was called for assignment for trial in the district court. Plaintiff was not present at the call and as a result the complaint was dismissed without prejudice. He claims that on the morning of the 25th his alarm clock did not operate because he forgot to pull the pin; that at the time he was under medication to make him drowsy and slept until about 12:30 p.m.; that almost immediately after realizing that he had overslept he called the district court to apprise the clerk of his predicament only to find that his case had already been dismissed. 3 It also appears that Denman was living alone on Cape Cod at the time, a considerable distance from the Federal Building in Boston. Notwithstanding this, he claims that he went to Boston without delay, tried to see the district judge to explain his absence at the call, but without success. Later that same afternoon (March 25) the instant long hand motion for reconsideration was filed. The record shows that the district court took no action on this motion until January 7, 1969.
Ordinarily in the absence of some good reason we would not be prone to excuse a party’s failure to answer a call for assignment of his case for trial. Here, however, there appear to be some mitigating circumstances. Giving the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt, we can understand why he overslept, particularly when he was taking prescribed medication to make him sleep. But after he finally awoke about mid-day he acted promptly to remedy the situation. The record does not indicate that he had been otherwise dilatory. Moreover, this is not a case where the witnesses had been summoned or where the trial was scheduled to begin that day. It was only the assignment day. There is no indication in the record that the opposing party was or would be seriously prejudiced by plaintiff’s failure to appear on time.
When the circumstances surrounding plaintiff’s tardiness were brought to the district court’s attention by the motion for reconsideration, we think the ends of justice would have been better served if the district court had taken the necessary steps to assign the case for trial on the merits. This pro se plaintiff would thereby have been assured of his day in court. Also, we are at a loss to understand why the district court dismissed the complaint so soon after the call was commenced and why some nine months were allowed to pass before the court took action on the motion for reconsideration. It is not as if this were a ease in which the complaint failed to state a cause of action. We have already held that it did. Case No. 7043, order of December 14, 1967. Under all the circumstances here we think the order denying reconsideration should be reversed and the case restored to the next assignment list.
Judgment will be entered vacating the order of the District Court, and remanding the ease with directions to place the case on the next assignment list.
. We note that plaintiff’s motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis was allowed by the district court “only as to Nathaniel Denman pro se.” No appeal having been perfected on behalf of the minor children, they are not now before this court.
. The record indicates that the order granting dismissal of the complaint was entered at 10:20 a. m. on March 25, 1968.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1