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:
Staunton C. STONESTREET, Appellant, v. SECRETARY OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE, Appellee.
No. 73-1898.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Dec. 6, 1973.
Decided March 20, 1974.
Robert N. Bland for appellant.
Ray L. Hampton, II, Asst. U. S. Atty. (John A. Field, III, U. S. Atty., on brief) for appellee.
Before BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judge, and WINTER and WIDENER, Circuit Judges.
WIDENER, Circuit Judge:
This is an appeal from an action under § 205(g) of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 405(g), to review a final decision of the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (Secretary) which denied Stonestreet’s application for disability benefits. The district court granted the Secretary’s motion for summary judgment.
This is Stonestreet’s fourth application for disability benefits under § 216 (i) and § 223 of the Act, 42 U.S.C. § 416(i) and § 423. His application contains substantially the same allegations as the other three, which were denied and the denials affirmed by the Appeals Council. Denial of the third application was also affirmed by the district court (S.D.W.Va.) in May of 1965. In all four of his applications, Stonestreet alleges that he became unable to work in September, 1953, because of a back injury incurred in an automobile accident. In his current application, he also alleges that two doctors thought he had heart trouble.
The hearing examiner concluded that the doctrine of administrative res judi-cata did not apply to Stonestreet’s present application because of the change of standard for impairment wrought by the 1965 amendments to the Act. He then considered Stonestreet’s new evidence, found that it was cumulative, and denied his application. The district court concluded that administrative res judicata, should have barred claimant’s application, but, in any event, the trial examiner’s findings (which became those of the Secretary) were supported by substantial evidence. We affirm.
A full discussion of the doctrine of administrative res judicata as it applies in Social Security proceedings is found in Leviner v. Richardson, 443 F.2d 1338 (4th Cir. 1971). There we held that the doctrine in administrative proceedings does not have the same aura of rigid finality as in judicial proceedings, and that a prior Social Security determination should not be res judicata where new and material evidence is offered. In this case, the only new evidence of any consequence consisted of two new medical reports of a Dr. Kuhn, who had also submitted medical reports or testified concerning this claimant in each of the three prior hearings. The Secretary concluded that the new reports were merely cumulative and added nothing to the evidence considered previously. It is clear that the Secretary’s decision was supported by substantial evidence and, had it not been for the 1965 amendment to 42 U.S.C. § 416 (i), he would have held the application barred by the doctrine of administrative res judicata.
In all of one claimant’s prior applications, the Secretary concluded that Stone-street had failed to show impairments which would prohibit him from engaging in substantial gainful employment prior to September 30, 1958, the date on which he last met the earnings requirements for disability purposes. The 1965 amendment to 42 U.S.C. § 416(i) did not change this element of disability under the Act, but simply liberalized the time requirement by providing that such “inability to engage in substantial gainful employment” need last or “be expected to last for more than 12 months” rather than the previous requirement of a “long and indefinite duration.” We have previously held in an almost identical situation that where the claimant failed to establish that he had been unable to engage in substantial gainful activity at any time before the end of his insured status, the effect of the 1965 amendment need not be reached. Everett v. Secretary of HEW, 412 F.2d 842 (4th Cir. 1969). Thus, since the 1965 amendment is not reached, it would not preclude a finding of res judicata as to the first element of disability (that claimant be found unable “to engage in substantial gainful employment”). See James v. Gardner,. 384 F.2d 784 (4th Cir. 1967). The only question, then, which could properly have been before the district court, was whether there was new and material evidence as defined in Leviner in order to permit a reopening of the merits of the case. He applied the proper standard and found no such new and material evidence, and we agree. We are of opinion res judica-ta bars the plaintiff’s claim.
Parenthetically, we should say that the record indicates there is substantial evidence to support the finding by the Secretary of no disability within the meaning of the statute prior to September 30, 1958.
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: 1