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:
THE ANNA O’BOYLE. THE ST. VINCENT. THE ST. LAWRENCE. THE CORONE.
No. 351.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Dec. 11, 1941.
Pyne & Lynch, of New York City, for appellant.
Platow, Lyon & Stebbins, of New York City, for libellant-appellee.
Before SWAN, CLARK, and FRANK, Circuit Judges.
SWAN, Circuit Judge.
An interlocutory decree in favor of tile libellant was affirmed by us in an opinion reported as The Anna O’Boyle, 122 F.2d 286. The appellant has petitioned for a rehearing of our decision, its principal contention being that if the evidence was insufficient to establish negligence on the part of the barge, as we held, then there was no negligence proven in respect to the original securing of the lines by the tugs. This is a non sequitur. The negligence of the tugs was in so mooring the floating steamer as to put an improper strain on the stern bitt of the sunken barge and to permit the steamer to rub against the barge on changes of tide and weather. The asserted negligence on the part of the barge was the bargee’s failure so to rearrange the lines as to prevent occurrence of the threatened damage. It is claimed that the bargee should have payed out the wire cable to ease the strain on the stern bitt. From exhibit 14 it appears that there was little, if any, extra length in the cable, but assuming it could have been paid out to some extent it is not apparent how this would have eased the strain more than momentarily, since the steamer, drifting with the tide, would promptly take up the slack and again exert a sidewise and lifting strain for which the bitt was not constructed. It is contended that the cable might have been shifted to one of the side bitts which were adapted for a side strain in towing alongside. They were not, however, adapted for a lifting strain such as the Corone necessarily exerted as the tide rose, and this was aggravated by her list. Mr. De Mars, an expert witness, testified: “There isn’t a bitt on that boat or on any boat built for a lifting strain.” As to the claim that the spring lines should have been shifted to give more of a fore and aft lead, there was no proof that they had sufficient length to serve this purpose. The libellant did attempt to place fenders between the vessels but they were ground into pulp.
It is not suggested that the bargee was negligent in failing to cast the Corone adrift. Yet this is the only way, so far as appears, in which the lifting strain, the main cause of the damage, could have been avoided. We see no reason to change our decision that the appellant failed to carry its burden of proving contributory negligence. None of the cases relied upon by the appellant for a division of damages deals with a situation such as this, where a buoyant vessel was moored to a sunken barge in such a manner as to exert a strain that no bitt was adapted to withstand. We adhere to our former decision.
Petition denied.

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