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:
Patricia Brown NELSON, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, Appellant, v. The Honorable Robert T. ROGERS, Judge of the Circuit Court, Twenty-Third Judicial Circuit of Virginia, Appellee.
No. 76-1524.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Dec. 7, 1976.
Decided Jan. 27, 1977.
Henry L. Woodward, Roanoke, Va. (Claude M. Lauck, The Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellant.
Henry M. Massie, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va. (Andrew P. Miller, Atty. Gen. of Va., Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and CRAVEN and HALL, Circuit Judges.
K. K. HALL, Circuit Judge:
The petitioner, Patricia Brown Nelson, brings this case on for review after the majority of a three-judge court below abstained from considering her claim that Sections 8-72 and 20-104 of the Virginia Code operate to deprive her of equal protection and due process of law.
In Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 91 S.Ct. 780, 28 L.Ed.2d 113 (1971), the United States Supreme Court struck down filing fees in divorce cases as a violation of due process where the fees blocked indigent plaintiffs from obtaining a court hearing in their good faith causes. The court further stated that, although the state could select from among various possible means of opening its courts to indigent divorce plaintiffs, it could not require a means of service that would in practice prevent the poor from obtaining their day in court:
“[W]e think that reliable alternatives exist to service of process by a state-paid sheriff if the State is unwilling to assume the cost of official service. This is perforce true of service by publication which is the method of notice least calculated to bring to a potential defendant’s attention the pending of judicial proceedings. . . . We think in this case service at defendant’s last known address by mail and posted notice is equally effective as publication in a newspaper (citations omitted).” 401 U.S. at 382, 91 S.Ct. at 788.
Since Boddie v. Connecticut, supra, the Virginia Supreme Court has had the opportunity to construe these statutory provisions in accord with the court’s dictates in Boddie. It has failed to do so. In Payne v. Payne, a divorce action instituted in 1971 in the Circuit Court for the City of Roanoke, Virginia, the petition of the Legal Aid Society requesting service other than by newspaper publication was denied. The Virginia Supreme Court refused to hear the denial on appeal on the basis that the order appealed from was not final. Mrs. Payne sought reconsideration of her petition in the Circuit Court of Roanoke, but it was again denied. Subsequent to Boddie, a writ of mandamus was filed with the Virginia Supreme Court in an attempt to compel the Circuit Court of Roanoke to grant her petition by construing the statutes in question. This petition was denied, no reasons being given. Appeal to the United States Supreme Court followed and was summarily dismissed. Payne v. Fox, 414 U.S. 1139, 94 S.Ct. 889, 39 L.Ed.2d 96 (1974).
The petitioner, Nelson, is an indigent and because of her poverty has been unable to comply with the requirements imposed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for a divorce. Regarding the claim of unconstitutionality of the Virginia statutes, the facts of the case at hand and the Payne case are indistinguishable.
We agree with Judge Turk, who dissented from abstaining in the three-judge court decision, that, “[T]he delicate state — federal relations which persuade the majority to abstain are outweighed by the interest of the individual in having her day in court.”
Inasmuch as the Virginia Supreme Court has had ample opportunity to consider and resolve this matter in line with the United States Supreme Court enunciation in Bod-die, supra, and has failed to do so, we think the three-judge court below erred in relying on the absention doctrine. Accordingly, we reverse and remand with instructions to consider the merits of the petitioner's claim.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
. This civil action was docketed as Chancery No. 2390-71 in the Circuit Court for the City of Roanoke, Virginia. After exhausting all channels of appeal, the Payne case became moot due to a reconciliation of the parties.
. Mrs. Nelson’s husband from whom she seeks divorce was last heard to be residing in Texas. She has been unable to afford to pay for the newspaper publication of service as required by the Virginia statutory provisions in question and by existing Virginia case law. Such newspaper publication is reputed to cost between $50 and $60.

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: 0