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:
TROUP et al. v. COX.
No. 10286.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Jan. 22, 1943.
Francis G. Boswell, of Washington, D. C., and Dunbar H. Johnson, Jr., of Miami, Fla., for appellants.
Wm. S. Hodges, of Washington, D. C., and Roscoe Brunstetter, of Miami, Fla., for appellee.
Before SIBLEY, HOLMES, and McCORD, Circuit Judges.
SIBLEY, Circuit Judge.
Charles A. Cox sued Elmo K. Troup and others for infringing patent No. 2,187,302 for a rock plow. The defenses pleaded were that in view of the prior art there was no patentable novelty, anticipation by other patents, and no infringement. The decree sustained the patent, adjudged infringement and directed an accounting.
There is not much in the testimony about the prior art, or the conception of this patent. We do not think either of the two patents in the printed record, No. 1,093,104 to Boyd for a road scarifier, No. 3,081,192 to Allin for a rock blade, or that to Dale, not printed, is an anticipation of Cox or enough like Cox in use or operation to negative novelty in the machine of Cox. Boyd’s machine, which is most relied on, is what it is named, a road scarifier, is drawn and not pushed by a tractor as is Cox’s, has no mold board to guide the loosened soil or rock to the sides to be crushed by the tractor, is not adapted to plowing up rock at all. There is not enough shown to overcome the presumption of patentable novelty that attaches to the issue of the patent. Utility is not denied, and is practically confessed by imitation.
We uphold the finding that there was imitation 'amounting to infringement as to rock plows made by Troup like the one photographed. Without describing the construction in detail we think it was in form and operation substantially like Cox’s patent. The main differences insisted on are that the ribs under the bed of the Troup machines are not of the same length and do not operate as “runners” as the patent states, and that Troup has improved operation by cutting away a part of the scraping blade ahead of the plow teeth. We think the ribs under the Troup machine act in the same way as those shown in the patent, though somewhat different in form; and that the modification of the scraping blade is not such as to escape infringement: If Troup has made any machines which entirely omit the mold boards of Cox “each including a scraper blade for action on the soil” and which have no mechanical equivalent for it, such machines would not infringe the combination of Cox. In the photograph of the infringing machine we think the lower edge of the mold board, with the supporting steel strip, acts as a scraper blade included in the mold board.
-The decree is affirmed.

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: 99