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:
JOHNSON et al. v. CHESAPEAKE & O. RY. CO.
No. 6213.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued April 3, 1951.
Decided April 10, 1951.
Henry E. Howell, Jr., Norfolk, Va. (Jett, Sykes & Howell, Norfolk, Va., on brief), for appellants.
Hewitt Biaett, Richmond, Va. (Leigh D. Williams, Norfolk, Va., and Horace L. Walker, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellee.
Before PARKER, Chief Judge, and SOPER and DOBIE, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This is an appeal from an order denying an injunction to restrain the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company from abandoning its ferry boat passenger service between Newport News- and Norfolk and Portsmouth in the State of Virginia. The abandonment of this service had been authorized by the State Corporation Commission of Virginia; but injunction was sought because the abandonment had not been authorized by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The plaintiffs in the court below, appellants here, were two individuals, one an engineer on one of the ferry boats which had been operated in the service, the other a dentist in the City of Norfolk. Neither alleged or proved any such interest in the continuance of the ferry service as would give them standing in court to maintain a suit of this character. L. Singer & Sons v. Union Pacific Railroad Company, 311 U.S. 295, 61 S.Ct. 254, 259, 85 L.Ed. 198. As was well said by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in the case cited: “WHo then is a ‘party in interest’? As a part of the very system through which the national policy is to be achieved, a railroad has been deemed by this Court a ‘party in interest’ to effectuate the railroad policy introduced by the licensing system of the Transportation Act. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co., 270 U.S. 266, 277, 46 S.Ct. 263, 266 70 L.Ed. 578; Western Pacific R. Co. v. Southern Pacific Co., 284 U.S. 47, 52 S.Ct. 56, 76 L.Ed. 160. And one who in a proceeding initiated before the Interstate Commerce Commission has been treated by it as a party to the litigation, cf. Los Angeles Passenger Terminal Cases, 100 I.C.C. 421; Id., 142 I.C.C. 489; Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Railroad Commission, 283 U.S. 380, 393, 394, 51 S.Ct. 553, 556, 557, 75 L.Ed. 1128, may perhaps .be deemed a ‘party in interest’ in the further pursuit of claims before a court after adverse action by the Commission. Compare Interstate Commerce Comm. v. Oregon-Washington R. Co., 288 U.S. 14, 53 S.Ct. 266, 77 L.Ed. 588, and Federal Communications Commission v. Sanders Bros. Radio Station, 309 U.S. 470, 60 S.Ct. 693, 84 L.Ed. 869, [1037]. But to allow any private interest to thresh out the complicated questions that arise out of § 1 (18-22) — as, for instance, whether a proposed construction is an ‘extension’ or a ‘spur’, compare Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co., 270 U.S. 266, 46 S.Ct. 263, 70 L.Ed. 578 — is to invite dislocation of the scheme which Congress has devised for the expert conduct of the litigation of such issues. It also would put upon the district courts the task of drawing fine lines in determining when a private claim is so special that it may be set apart from the general public interest and give the claimant power to litigate a public controversy. These inquiries are so harassing and unprofitable as to be avoided, unless Congress has explicitly cast the duty upon the courts. Against any such implication, in the absence of rather plain language, the whole course of federal railroad legislation and the relation of the Interstate Commerce Commission to it admonishes. The interests of merely private concerns are amply protected even though they must be channelled through the Attorney General or the Interstate Commerce Commission or a state commission.”
The judgment and order of the District Court will be vacated and the cause will be remanded with direction that it be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
Judgment vacated and cause remanded with direction to dismiss.

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

Choices:

Answer: 2