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:
Louis G. SHERMAN, Jr., and Randolph W. Commins, Executors of the Estate of Louis G. Sherman, Sr., under Last Will and Testament of Louis G. Sherman, Sr., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 73-3056.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
April 19, 1974.
Hugh W. Gibert, David L. Ross, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Julian Longley, Asst. U. S. Atty., John W. Stokes, Jr., U. S. Atty., William D. Mallard, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., Atlanta, Ga., D. Wendell Barnett, Trial Atty., Jay R. Weill, Elmer J. Kelsey, Michael J. Roach, Attys., Scott P. Crampton, Meyer Rothwacks, Asst. Attys. Gen., Tax Div., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for defendant-appellee.
Before ALDRICH Senior Circuit Judge, and BELL and GEE, Circuit Judges.
Hon. Bailey Aldrich, Senior Circuit Judge of the First Circuit, sitting by designation.
ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge:
This action to recover an alleged overpayment of estate tax was previously before this court, 462 F.2d 577. At that time we affirmed a finding that there was a deductible obligation of the estate because of a support agreement between decedent and his wife from whom he had been separated, but we remanded for reconsideration of the amount. At the second trial the court took evidence, determined that the amount was immeasurable, and disallowed the deduction in its entirety. • The executors appeal.
The facts are relatively simple. Prior to their separation the decedent had created an inter vivos trust for the benefit of his wife for life, with a power in the trustees to invade principal. Thereafter the parties separated. A settlement agreement was entered into whereby decedent would pay his wife $1500 a month for life, or until she remarried, but it was provided that receipts from the trust should be credited towards its satisfaction. At decedent’s death the assets of the trust were $83,953. It was stipulated that as of that date, based upon actuarial tables showing the widow’s life expectancy and possibility of remarriage, the commuted value of the right to receive $1500 a month until her death or remarriage was $129,040. In spite of this liquidization, the government persuaded the district court that it was uncertain whether the widow would live or remain unremarried long enough to consume the assets of the inter vivos trust, and hence it was uncertain whether the estate would ever have to make payments on account of the separation agreement. The court concluded that the executors had not proven any allowable deduction.
This legerdemain whereby what would concededly have been a deductible obligation in the amount of $129,040 became worthless to the estate because $83,953 was available elsewhere to pay it, is sought to be explained by the government on the basis of an actuarial computation that we accept for present purposes subject to a comment, that there was a 30% chance that the widow would not live long enough to exhaust the trust. Our comment is that it would be equally appropriate, or, rather, equally inappropriate, to say that there may be, for example, a 30% possibility that the widow will live, unmarried, substantially longer than the normal expectancy date on which the $129,040 figure was computed; the government is rejecting the whole principle of actuarial evaluation. On the basis of that universally accepted practice, with an obligation whose stipulated value was $129,040 and a trust possessing $83,953, the estate was faced with a demonstrated deficiency of $45,087.
The government contends, however, that since there was a 30% possibility that the widow would not live beyond the capability of the trust, it is legally impermissible to take a deduction at all. For this it cites a number of cases holding that a testamentary charitable gift that is contingent may not be deducted if the chance that the contingency will not occur, viz., that the gift will not vest, is more than “negligible,” e. g., Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Estate of Sternberger, 1955, 348 U.S. 187, 75 S.Ct. 229, 99 L.Ed. 246, and that a 30% chance meets that description, United States v. Dean, 1 Cir., 1955, 224 F.2d 26. The government discusses these cases at length to show their pertinency, but carefully avoids calling our attention to their express rationale, a Treasury Regulation specially, and solely, applicable to charitable gifts.
The government’s contention that we should follow these cases, without noting this distinguishing feature plainly relied on by the courts, see both the majority and dissenting opinions in Estate of Sternberger, ante, and the observations of the First Circuit in Dean, 224 F.2d at 28-29, we must regard as censurable; the court expects more forthrightness from government counsel. There is no comparable regulation limiting deductions on account of debts of the estate. Had there been no possibility of a contribution from the inter vivos trust, the estate would have been entitled to the full deduction of $129,040 in spite of the possibility that the widow would not have lived unmarried to normal expectancy. Commissioner v. Maresi, 2 Cir., 1946, 156 F.2d 929. This same possibility is not to be employed, in the absence of any compelling regulation, to permit the deduction to be wiped out by a trust whose assets are substantially inadequate on their face.
The executors argue that we should not assume as a fact that the trustees will elect to pay out, and that they, in turn, may have to pay a correspondingly even larger deficiency than $45,087. We do not face this problem in a theoretical area, however, but in one limited by realities. The executors and ultimate testamentary trustees, and the inter vivos trustees, are the same individuals. The burden of establishing a deduction is on the executors. We cannot permit them to increase the deduction by their own voluntary action as to choice of payment. Nor do we think it appropriate to review the difficulties allegedly facing the trustees under Georgia law, which, at most, do not seem insuperable.
Reversed and remanded for entry of judgment for appellants consistent with this opinion.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0