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. Kevin Ronald HAMILTON, Appellant.
No. 79-5081.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued May 8, 1980.
Decided July 22, 1980.
John E. Griswold, Petersburg, Va. (White, Hamilton, Wyche & Shell, Peters-burg, Va., on brief), for appellant.
N. George Metcalf, Asst. U.S. Atty., Richmond, Va. (Justin W. Williams, U.S. Atty., Richmond, Va., Tom B. Barwick, Student Asst, to the U.S. Atty., on brief), for appellee.
Before FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge, and HALL and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges.
FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge:
A federal grand jury for the Eastern District of Virginia returned a two count indictment against the defendant, Kevin Ronald Hamilton. The first count charged the defendant with an assault with a dangerous weapon upon an employee of the Federal Correctional Institution at Peters-burg, Virginia, in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. § 111. The second count charged Hamilton with the conveyance from place to place within the Institution of a weapon, substance or thing designed to kill, injure or disable an employee of the Institution in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1792. The defendant waived a jury and was tried to the court who convicted him on both counts. Hamilton has appealed.
The evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the Government, disclosed the following facts. On December 15, 1978, the defendant, upon returning from a visit to the dentist, refused to enter his cell. The Correctional Supervisor called upon several officers, including Sheryl Murray, to assist in placing Hamilton in his cell. As the officers entered the area, the defendant procured a broom handle from his cell and approached the guards swinging the handle “like a ball bat.” When the defendant took the broom handle from his cell, the bottom or bristle portion of the broom had been removed from the handle. The defendant walked forty to fifty feet from his cell while swinging the handle in a menacing manner, and upon reaching the officers struck Murray twice inflicting painful injuries.
We have little difficulty with the conviction on the first count. While there was some conflict in the testimony concerning the confrontation between the defendant and the officers, there was ample evidence to support the court’s determination of guilt, and unquestionably “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).
In challenging his conviction under count two, the defendant argues that since the broom handle had not been modified or altered in any way it could not be properly classified as a “weapon * * * or thing designed to kill, injure, or disable” under Section 1792. We cannot accept such a restrictive reading of the statute. By its terms, the statute does not limit the crime to weapons or firearms, but embraces any “substance or thing designed to kill, injure, or disable any officer, agent, employee, or inmate.” As the court noted in United States v. Roche, 443 F.2d 98, 100 (10 Cir. 1971), “the statute goes further than prohibiting only proven combat weapons.”
The objective of section 1792 is the maintenance of order and security in federal penal institutions. Articles which would ordinarily be considered relatively innocuous may acquire the characteristics of a lethal weapon in a penal institution. Whether an article should be deemed a weapon depends not only upon the nature of the article but the intent with which it is used or conveyed by the individual. This is ordinarily a question to be determined by the jury or the court as trier of the facts. In United States v. Barnes, 569 F.2d 862, 863 (5 Cir. 1978), the court noted “that almost any implement, even a belt buckle, could be intended or used as a weapon,” and held that whether an item constituted a weapon, was a question of fact for the jury. See also United States v. Swindler, 476 F.2d 167, 170 (10 Cir. 1973), cert. denied 414 U.S. 837, 94 S.Ct. 183, 38 L.Ed.2d 72.
In our own circuit, we have read the phrase “dangerous weapon” in a liberal fashion. In United States v. Johnson, 324 F.2d 264 (4 Cir. 1963), we affirmed a conviction of an assault with a dangerous weapon under 18 U.S.C. § 113(c), a statute, incidentally, much narrower in its terms than section 1792. There the defendant had struck and injured an institutional officer with a metal and plastic chair. Writing for the court in that case, Judge Sobeloff made the following observation:
The main legal contention is that a chair is not a dangerous weapon. While it may not be a dangerous weapon per se, 4 AmJur. Assault and Battery § 34, p. 145, almost any object “which as used or attempted to be used may endanger life or inflict great bodily harm." United States v. Anderson, 190 F.Supp. 589, 591 (D. Md. 1960), or which, as it is sometimes expressed, “is likely to produce death or great bodily harm," Tatum v. United States, 71 App.D.C. 393, 110 F.2d 555, 556 (1940), can in certain circumstances be a dangerous weapon. Illustrating this principle, courts have held that a wine bottle can be a dangerous weapon, Thornton v. United States, 106 U.S.App.D.C. 7, 268 F.2d 583 (1959); shoes can be dangerous weapons, Medlin v. United States, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 64, 207 F.2d 33 (1953); a rake can be a dangerous weapon, Eagleston v. United States, 172 F.2d 194 (9th Cir. 1949); a thrown club can be a dangerous weapon, United States v. Anderson, 190 F.Supp. 589 (D. Md.1961); a brick can be a dangerous weapon, State v. Perry, 226 N.C. 530, 39 S.E.2d 460 (1946); and a chair leg can be a dangerous weapon, Wisniewski v. State, 51 Del. 84 [1 Storey 84] 138 A.2d 333 (1957). Not the object’s latent capability alone, but that, coupled with the manner of its use, is determinative. The chair in the instant case was metal and plastic. It was wielded from an upright (overhead) position and brought down upon the victim’s head. Fortuitously, the wound inflicted was not serious, but had the blow fallen an inch lower it could have endangered Cassidy’s eye, or if slightly higher, a dangerous head wound was likely. Evidence of such use of a chair is sufficient to support its characterization by the District Court as a dangerous weapon.” (Emphasis added).
324 F.2d., at 266.
In our opinion the conclusion of the district judge that the broom handle used and conveyed by the defendant constituted a weapon “or thing designed to kill, injure or disable” within the meaning of section 1792 was reasonable and amply supported by the evidence. We further conclude that traversing the forty or fifty feet between his cell and the officers while brandishing the weapon was a sufficient “conveyance” by the defendant to establish that element of the offense. See United States v. LaBare, 542 F.2d 926 (4 Cir. 1976), cert. denied 429 U.S. 1027, 97 S.Ct. 651, 50 L.Ed.2d 630. Accordingly, the convictions on both counts are affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
. 18 U.S.C. § 111. Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees
Whoever forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with any person designated in section 1114 of this title while engaged in or on account of the performance of his official duties, shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
Whoever, in the commission of any such acts uses a deadly or dangerous weapon, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years or both.
. 18 U.S.C. § 1792 reads in pertinent part as follows:
Whoever conveys into such institution, or from place to place therein, any firearm, weapon, explosive, or any lethal or poisonous gas, or any other substance or thing designed to kill, injure, or disable any officer, agent, employee, or inmate thereof, or conspires so to do—
Shall be imprisoned not more than ten years.

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