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:
Francis E. HOLMAN and Eloise F. Holman, his wife, Appellants, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Appellee. William M. HOLMAN and Emily L. Holman, his wife, Appellants, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Appellee.
Nos. 76-3671, 76-3672.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Nov. 3, 1977.
William M. Holman, Seattle, Wash, (argued), for appellants.
Gilbert S. Rothenberg, Dept, of Justice, Washington, D.C. (argued), for appellee.
Before WALLACE and SNEED, Circuit Judges, and BOLDT , District Judge.
Hon. George H. Boldt, Senior United States District Judge for the Western District of Washington, sitting by designation.
SNEED, Circuit Judge:
Francis E. Holman and William M. Holman were partners in a law firm from which, pursuant to the terms of the partnership agreement, they were expelled. As a consequence, again pursuant to the partnership agreement, they received in the taxable years of 1969 and 1970 certain amounts for their interests in the partnership “inventory” which the partnership agreement defined to mean “accounts receivable” and “unbilled services.”
The Holmans argue that these amounts in their entirety are entitled to be taxed as capital gains. The Commissioner insists that these amounts should be taxed as ordinary income. The Tax Court agreed with the Commissioner, Francis E. Holman, 66 T.C. 809 (1976), and so do we.
The position of the Holmans is not lacking in ingenuity. Essentially it is that these payments, having been made pursuant to an “expulsion” rather than because of a partner’s death, retirement, or his transfer of his partnership interest, escape the reach of sections 736 and 751 of the 1954 Internal Revenue Code and perforce must be governed by the final sentence of section 731(a). That sentence reads:
“Any gain or loss recognized under this subsection shall be considered a gain or loss from the sale or exchange of the partnership interest of the distributee partner.”
Inasmuch as their partnership interest constituted a capital asset the Holmans contend that this sentence dictates that the amounts in question be treated as capital gain.
The Commissioner’s contention is that the payments do not escape the reach of sections 736 and 751 and that as a consequence the tax characteristics of the amounts are governed by those sections and not by the final sentence of section 731(a). Insofar as section 736 is concerned, the Commissioner insists that each of the taxpayers was a “retiring partner” in receipt of a “guaranteed payment,” as described in section 736(a)(2), which constituted payment for “unrealized receivables of the partnership” as employed in section 736(b) and defined in section 751(c). Such payments, pursuant to section 736(b) are not “in exchange for the interest of such partner in the partnership” and thus not entitled to capital gains treatment. The applicable regulation supports the Commissioner. It provides that “A partner retires when he ceases to be a partner under the local law.” Income Tax Reg. § 1.736 — l(a)(l)(ii).
We hold that the Commissioner’s analysis, with which the Tax Court agreed, is correct. We do this because we are convinced that Congress in this context did not intend to draw a distinction between a partner who voluntarily withdraws from a partnership because of age or other reasons and a partner who is expelled from the partnership. The above quoted regulation correctly reflects that intention. Moreover, an interpretive regulation, not unreasonable and not obviously inconsistent with the statute, should be given effect. See Kean v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 469 F.2d 1183 (9th Cir. 1972).
An interpretation which recognized the distinction between retirement and expulsion for the purpose of permitting payments on expulsion to be taxed as capital gains, while identical payments on retirement would be taxed as ordinary income, would bear no sensible relationship to the purposes reflected by the séetions of the Code involved here. Congress intended that payments by a partnership to a partner for his share of the partnership’s receivables should be taxed as ordinary income to the recipient and not taxed at all to the remaining partners. Cf. 1 Willis, Partnership Taxation, § 46.01-46.03 (1976). This purpose is furthered by the Commissioner’s interpretation; it would be frustrated to a degree by that of the taxpayers. We have no desire to encourage the use of “expulsions” to circumvent the normal operation of sections 731, 736 and 751.
AFFIRMED.

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