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:
HOM MOON ONG v. NAGLE, Commissioner of Immigration.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
April 29, 1929.
No. 5593.
Marshall B. Woodworth, of San Francisco, Cal., for appellant.
George J. Hatfield, U. S. Atty., and George M. Naus, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of San Francisco, Cal., for appellee.
Before GILBERT, RUDKIN, and DIETRICH, Circuit Judges.
GILBERT, Circuit Judge.
The appellant, claiming to he a foreign-born eitizen of the United States, was denied admission on his application to enter the United States on a hearing before a board of special inquiry. Upon the dismissal of his appeal to the Secretary of Labor, he filed in the court below his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. That court, without issuing an order to show cause, denied the writ. The petition alleged that the petitioner was denied a full and fair hearing by the members of the board of special inquiry, in that said members were so shifted around and substituted one for another that at no hearing did the same three members function or hear the testimony or see the witnesses, and therefore they “could not and did not” become sufficiently familiar with the facts to enable them to arrive at an intelligent judgment concerning the right of the petitioner to enter the United States. The petition further alleged that all the testimony and proceedings before the hoard “are now in 'the possession and subject to the control of the Secretary of Labor and all of them are now inaccessible to your petitioner, that said Secretary of Labor will not permit an inspection of said records, nor allow a copy of the same to be made in order to be filed with and made a part of this petition.”
The appellant directs attention to the fact that no order to show cause was issued upon the petition. 28.USCA § 455, requires that the writ shall be issued, “unless it appears from the petition itself that the party is not entitled thereto.” Obviously the court below was of the opinion that the petition presented no ground either for the issuance of a writ or an order to show cause. This court applied the rule of the statute in a similar case in Erickson v. Hodges, 179 F. 177.
The appellant’s main contention is based upon the allegation of the petition that the members of the board were shifted and changed so that at no meeting did the same three function. A similar contention was made in Dong Ying Fun v. Nagle (C. C. A.) 5 F.(2d) 310, where it was asserted that the members of the board were so changed during the hearing that no two of them heard the testimony, and that only one of the members who finally disposed of the application had been on the several boards that previously had heard the matter. This court referred to the fact that the last meeting of the board considered all of the evidence adduced in the case and made the decision, and held that the hoard could lawfully dispose of and. pass upon the application, and could consider the testimony that had theretofore been taken, including a deposition which had been obtained in a foreign jurisdiction. There is nothing in the petition in the present ease to indicate that at the final hearing all the testimony taken in prior hearings was not considered by three members of the board in disposing of the question of the appellant’s right to enter the United States. We think that the decision in the Dong Ying Fun Case conclusively answers the appellant’s contention here.
The appellant attempts to assimilate the rules governing the functions of a board of special inquiry to those which apply to a court, and cites authorities to the proposition that, where a court consists of several judges, the absence of one will work its disorganization, and that a disposition of a case by a court organized in violation of statutory provisions must be held null and void. But a board of special inquiry is but an instrument of the executive power, and is not a court, and the proceedings to determine the right of a foreign-born person, claiming citizenship, to enter the United States, are administrative and not judicial, nor are the members of the board judicial officers. Pearson v. Williams, 202 U. S. 281, 26 S. Ct. 608, 50 L. Ed. 1029; White v. Chan Wy Sheung (C. C. A.) 270 F. 764, 767; Lim Jew v. United States (C. C. A.) 196 F. 736, 744. By the settled practice before the board, consideration is permitted of evidence taken before a single immigration inspector, Quon Quon Poy v. Johnson, 273 U. S. 352, 357, 47 S. Ct. 346, 71 L. Ed. 680, and questions are determined upon any credible evidence, such, for instance, as the prior immigration records, Moy Said Ching v. Tillinghast (C. C. A.) 21 F.(2d) 810.
The allegation that the members of the board could not and did not become sufficiently familiar with the facts of the ease to enable them to render a fair judgment presented no ground for action to the court below. It was but the statement of a conclusion, not the presentation of a substantive averment from which the court could deduct the conclusion that the board failed to ascertain the facts. Nor was ground for action presented by the allegation that the immigration record was inaccessible to the appellant or. that the Secretary of Labor would not permit an inspection thereof nor allow a copy of the same to be made. For it did not follow that the appellant was not in possession of copies of the record or was not apprised of all the information which the record contained or was uninformed of any material fact which might have been shown thereby.
The judgment is affirmed.

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