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:
UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. William S. ALESSIO, Defendant, Appellant.
No. 7774.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
March 11, 1971.
Gordon C. Mulligan, Warwick, R. I., by appointment of the Court, for defendant-appellant.
Joseph C. Johnston, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Lincoln C. Almond, U. S. Atty., was on brief, for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge Mc-ENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Defendant’s appeal raises three questions, two of which are so lacking in merit as to require no mention. The third is more troublesome. The defendant was indicted for larceny of government property. 18 U.S.C. § 641. One of the items he was charged with taking was certain U. S. currency, allegedly belonging to the petty cash fund of a government installation. In the course of the trial at which defendant was convicted, it was sought to show on cross-examination of two government witnesses that this money belonged to a government employee who was merely indebted to the government therefor, as distinguished from being directly owned by the government. This would have been fatal to that aspect of the government’s case. At one stage of the interrogation the court sustained a government objection, stating that indisputably the money in the fund constituted government property.
The relevant portions of the testimony include the following. On cross-examination a Mr. Clark, a government witness, testified as follows.
A. I think I said personally responsible.
Q. Personally responsible for. And that money becomes your money, and you owe the money to the United States by accounting for how it is spent?
A. That is correct.
Later, when co-defendant’s counsel referred to this testimony, the following colloquy occurred.
The COURT. I think not, Mr. Berk. The money didn’t belong to Mr. Clark. It wasn’t usable for Mr. Clark’s purposes; it was merely a trust fund of money belonging to the Government. I don’t find any merit in that contention.
Mr. BERK. Does the Court make that finding?
The COURT. I do. It was the property of the United States Government.
Defendant noted his objection.
The court could properly make a ruling of law with respect to title, predicated upon findings of fact which it left to the jury. However, it is clear that the court did more. It left nothing to the jury. It made a “finding” that the money belonged to the government, which was not only an essential element in the government’s case, but depended upon an acceptance of the testimony of the government witnesses. The court cannot make a finding accepting the government’s testimony, no matter how clear it may be; the burden still remained on the government to prove the money in the fund belonged to it. Testimony, though unchallenged, may still be disbelieved. As we said in DeCecco v. United States, 1 Cir., 1964, 338 F.2d 797, at 798, “No matter how persuasive the government’s evidence may seem to the court, there is no burden on a defendant to dispute it.” We held it to be error in DeCecco for the court to inform the jury that it did not have to make a finding as to a certain element in the government’s case because the defendant did not dispute it. It was even greater error for the court here to make such a statement when counsel had, although possibly ineffectively, sought to make an issue of the matter.
Reversed, new trial ordered.

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