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:
In re SEPCO, INC., Debtor. UNITED STATES of America, Farmers Home Administration, and Valley State Bank, Appellants, v. ARLON INDUSTRIES, INC., Appellee.
No. 84-1634.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted Oct. 11, 1984.
Decided Dec. 12, 1984.
William J. Klimisch, Yankton, S.D., for appellants.
Craig A. Kennedy, Yankton, S.D., for appellee.
Before ARNOLD, FAGG and BOWMAN, Circuit Judges.
FAGG, Circuit Judge.
Valley State Bank and the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) appeal the district court’s affirmance of a bankruptcy court ruling in a lien priority dispute arising out of the failure of Sepco, Inc.’s alcohol fuel production facility in South Dakota. The Bank and FmHA seek priority for security interests first acquired by the Bank and now shared by FmHA in return for financing construction of Sepco’s facility. The bankruptcy court found that Arlon Industries, Inc., has a valid mechanic’s lien on Sepco’s plant and equipment with priority over the Bank’s security interests in the same property, 36 B.R. 279, and the district court affirmed. We affirm the judgment of the district court.
Because the value of Sepco’s estate is insufficient to satisfy the liens of both the Bank and Arlon, the Bank urges reversal on two grounds. First, the Bank claims that Arlon’s mechanic’s lien is invalid because it was not timely filed, it contains willful misstatements, and it claims an unreasonable amount for the value of Arlon’s lien. Second, assuming Arlon’s lien is valid, the Bank claims that Arlon agreed to subordinate its lien to any security interests acquired by the Bank.
As the bankruptcy court found the facts, Sepco first contacted Arlon in October 1979 to buy a piece of alcohol production equipment for Sepco’s plant. In early 1980, Sepco ordered more pieces from Arlon, and by February 1980 Arlon and Sepco had established a relationship which remained permanent and continuous for the rest of Sepco’s life. Though the details of Arlon’s obligations changed as Sepco’s experimental design evolved, Arlon remained Sepco’s prime supplier of alcohol production equipment until the plant closed on May 16, 1981. On May 18, 1981, Arlon filed a mechanic’s lien for the unpaid balance on equipment and labor.
Valley State Bank financed Sepco’s operation with a series of secured loans beginning in June 1980. In July 1980, the Bank sought to strengthen its position by asking Arlon to subordinate its lien priority position to that of the Bank. Without contacting anyone at Sepco, a Bank officer presented Arlon with a document that memorialized Arlon’s and Sepco’s completed and contemplated obligations and subordinated Arlon’s lien rights to the security interests of the Bank. Arlon’s officers signed the document in reliance on the Bank officer’s promise to ensure that funds would be set aside from future advances to Sepco to satisfy Sepco’s debts to Arlon. The Bank did not perform its promise to earmark funds for Arlon.
The bankruptcy court held that Arlon’s mechanic’s lien, filed two days after it finished work at the Sepco site, assumed the transaction’s commencement date of February 1980 as its priority date, well before the Bank filed its security interests. In addition, the bankruptcy court determined that Arlon’s mechanic’s lien did not contain willful misstatements and that its claim was reasonable. Finally, the bankruptcy court refused to enforce the subordination agreement on grounds of lack of consideration, fraud, equitable estoppel, unjust enrichment, and equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. § 510(c). The district court affirmed the bankruptcy court’s decision on the ground that lack of consideration alone is sufficient to justify invalidating the subordination agreement.
When the bankruptcy court’s findings have been approved on review by the district court, the findings are presumptively correct and will not be set aside “ ‘unless some obvious error has occurred in the application of the law, or some serious or important mistake has been made in the consideration of the evidence.’ ” Solari Furs v. United States, 436 F.2d 683, 684 (8th Cir.1971) (quoting Tarutis v. United States, 354 F.2d 546, 549 (8th Cir.1965)). After a careful review of the record, we find no error in the lower courts’ findings or conclusions concerning the validity of Arlon’s lien.
The record supports the lower courts’ finding that Arlon received nothing in return for signing a subordination agreement. Both the bankruptcy and district courts interpreted South Dakota law, e.g., American State Bank v. Cwach, 85 S.D. 562, 187 N.W.2d 107, 109-10 (1971), to prevent the Bank and FmHA from taking advantage of the agreement. We see no reason to deviate from the deference normally accorded to a district court’s interpretation of the law of the state in which it sits, see, e.g., Mitchell v. City of Minneapolis, 707 F.2d 490, 491 (8th Cir.1983).
The judgment of the district court 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: 1