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.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

Opinion:
Andrew J. EASTER and Mildred P. Easter, Petitioners, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent.
No. 9602.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued Nov. 16, 1964.
Decided Dec. 1, 1964.
Andrew J. Easter, petitioner, pro se.
Norman Sepenuk, Atty., Dept. of Justice (Louis F. Oberdorfer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Lee A. Jackson and Melva M. Graney, Attys., Dept. of Justice, on brief), for respondent.
Before SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, and BOREMAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
We have carefully reviewed the decision of the Tax Court in this matter, and for the reasons set out in its opinion, we affirm.
The adjustment of the depreciation basis for the facilities located at 6608 Belair Road, Baltimore, Maryland,was clearly proper, since it is undisputed that the taxpayer himself invested only $28,000 in the buildings on that site. It is elemental that a taxpayer cannot recoup by means of depreciation deductions an investment in a depreciable asset made by a stranger. Detroit Edison Co. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 319 U.S. 98, 102, 63 S.Ct. 902, 87 L.Ed. 1286 (1943); Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Revere Land Co., 169 F.2d 469 (3 Cir.), cert. denied, 335 U.S. 853, 69 S.Ct. 82, 93 L.Ed. 401 (1948); Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Arundel-Brooks Concrete Corp., 152 F.2d 225, 162 A.L.R. 1200 (4 Cir. 1945).
There also was no error in the redetermination of the remaining useful life of the other three pieces of property involved in this litigation, for the Tax Court decisions concerning the structures at both 2801 Adams Mill Road in Washington, D. C., and 6420 Belair Road in Baltimore are supported by substantial credible evidence in the record. Regarding the frame house located at 6502 Belair Road in Baltimore, neither the Government nor the taxpayer produced evidence from which a decision could be made as to its reasonable estimated useful life. Since the Commissioner’s determination in this regard is presumptively correct and the burden is upon the taxpayer to show error therein, Burka v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 179 F.2d 483 (4 Cir. 1950), the Tax Court had no choice but to accept the useful life position contended for by the Commissioner, and we have no choice but to affirm.
While it may be somewhat frustrating to the petitioner, the law is nonetheless settled that the acceptance of returns filed by a taxpayer in earlier years and the acquiescence in the taxpayer’s depreciation basis and useful life figures contained therein for the purpose of approving tax refunds will not support an estoppel argument or bar the Commissioner’s action in correcting a mistake in the taxpayer’s prior returns when it is detected by him within the period of limitations. M. Pauline Casey, 38 T.C. 357, 381 (1962); cf. Caldwell v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 202 F.2d 112, 115 (2 Cir. 1953).
Affirmed.

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?

Choices:
private business (including criminal enterprises)
private organization or association
federal government (including DC)
sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
government - level not ascertained
natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
miscellaneous
not ascertained

Answer: 2