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 respondents in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
UNITED STATES v. NORTHERN FINANCE CORPORATION.
(Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
January 10, 1927.)
No. 156.
I. Limitation of actions <@=wl 19(2) — Generally action is deemed commenced when writ is lodged with sheriff for service.
Generally action is deemed to be commenced. within statute of limitation, as soon as writ, after issuance, has been lodged in sheriff’s hands for service.
2. Limitation of actions <@=>l 19(2)— Statute limiting time for actions for additional income tax was tolled, where summons issued and delivered to marshal day before enactment (Revenue Act 1921, § 250[d], being Comp. St. § 6336'/sit).
Where summons, in action to recover additional income tax, was issued and placed in marshal’s hands for service before enactment of Revenue Act of 1921, limiting by section 250 (d), being Comp. St. § 6336%tt, such suits to five years, except such suits as were pending, statute was tolled.
In Error to the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
Action by the United States against the Northern Finance Corporation to recover an additional income tax for the year 1915. Judgment dismissing the complaint, and plaintiff brings error.
Reversed and remanded, with directions.
The complaint alleged that the defendant had filed an income tax return for tie year 1915 and paid the amount therein stated; that, for various reasons alleged, the defendant owed a larger sum, which became due on June 30, 1916. The answer denied none of the allegations of the complaint, but alleged that the action had not been begun within five years after the time when the tax became due, or before the passage of the Revenue Act of 1921 (42 Stat. 227).
The ease was heard on agreed facts, as follows: The summons was issued on November 22,1921, and on the same day lodged in the marshal’s hands for service. It was served on November 29, 1921, and the complaint was filed on. July 21, 1923.
The Revenue Act of 1921 was passed on November 23,1921, of which section 250 (d) provided that “no suit or proceeding for the collection of any such taxes * * * shall be begun, after the expiration of five years after the date when such return was filed, but this shall not affect suits or proceedings begun at the time of the passage of this act.” Comp. St. § 6336%tt.
Emory R. Buckner, U. S. Atty., of New York City (Samuel C. Coleman, Asst. U. S. Atty., of New York City, of counsel), for the United States.
Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, of New York City (Heber Smith and A. Delafield Smith, both of New York City, of counsel), for defendant in error.
Before MANTON and HAND, Circuit Judges, and CAMPBELL, District Judge.
HAND, Circuit Judge
(after stating the facts as above). We have been unable to see the significance of the defendant’s argument that the limitation in section 250 (d) is upon the right, and not upon the remedy, and that it “is jurisdictional in its character.” That the section is a statute of limitations appeal’s to us too plain for argument, and we are as much compelled to determine when the action is “begun,” if the limitation be upon the right, as if it be upon the remedy. As a statute of limitations it appears to us that it must be read as such statutes always have been, especially as we can see no difference in meaning between the word “begun,” here chosen, and the usual word, “commenced,” or the phrase, “commenced and sued,” of the statute of James I (1623).
It has been the general, if not the uniform, interpretation of statutes of limitation, that the action is commenced at least as soon as the writ, after issuance, has been lodged in the sheriff’s hand for service. Brown v. Babbington, 2 Ld. Raymond, 880; Harris v. Woolford, 6 Term Rep. 617; Parsons v. King, 7 Term Rep. 6; Bell v. Ohio, etc., Co., Fed. Cas. No. 1,260; Burdick v. Green, 18 Johns. (N. Y.) 14; Jackson v. Brooks, 14 Wend. (N. Y.) 649; Day v. Lamb, 7 Vt. 426; McCracken v. Richardson, 46 N. J. Law, 50; Mason v. Cheney, 47 N. H. 24; Johnson v. Farwell, 7 Greenl. (7 Me.) 370, 22 Am. Dec. 203; Wood on Limitations, vol. 2, p. 570. The question is now generally expressly covered by statute, as it is in New York. Section 17 of the Civil Practice Act. Indeed, the best modern instances are those of suits in equity, which accept the statute of limitation by analogy from actions at law. Here it is the usual rule that the issuance of subpoena, after bill filed, and the lodgment of it for service in the sheriff’s hands, tolls the statute. Linn & Lane Timber Co., v. U. S., 236 U. S. 574, 35 S. Ct. 440, 59 L. Ed. 725; U. S. v. American Lumber Co., 85 F. 827 (C. C. A. 9); U. S. v. Miller (C. C.) 164 F. 444; International Paper Co. v. Commonwealth, 232 Mass. 7, 121 N. E. 510. The mere filing of the hill is at times enough, Armstrong Cork Co. v. Merchants’ Refrigerating Co., 184 F. 199 (C. C. A. 8), following the Missouri statute. Why a different rule should apply to this statute we cannot see. This result is quite independent of section 17 of the New York Practice Act, which does no more than codify the prevailing construction of statutes of limitation which had preceded it.
Strictly, the ease does not involve the question whether the section should have a uniform meaning, wherever the action is brought, or whether the time when it is “begun” is to be determined by the local law. In either ease the statute was tolled in the ease at bar, though so far as we can see, Goldenberg v. Murphy, 108 U. S. 162, 2 S. Ct. 388, 27 L. Ed. 686, is fiat for the second view, and rules. The defendant by way of distinction suggests that that was a removed suit, and that the court overlooked the jurisdictional point. But the limitation of the statute there at bar applied equally in whatever court the suit was brought, and, as we have just said, the supposed jurisdictional question had nothing to do with its meaning.
Judgment reversed, and cause remanded, with instructions to enter judgment for the plaintiff on the agreed facts.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1