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:
GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, and Interstate Commerce Commission, Defendants-Appellees, and The Alabama Great Southern Railroad Company et al., Intervening Defendants-Appellees.
No. 14594.
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.
Feb. 17, 1962.
Aloysius F. Power, Walter R. Frizzell and E. J. McGratty, Jr., Detroit, Mich., for General Motors Corp.
William H. Orriek, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Morton Hollander, David L. Rose, Attys. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D. C., and Lawrence Gubow, U. S. Atty., Detroit, Mich., for the United States.
Arthur J. Cerra, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Robert W. Ginnane, Gen. Counsel, Washington, D. C., for Interstate Commerce Commission.
J. Edgar McDonald, New York City, for the Alabama Great Southern R. Co., and others.
Before MeALLISTER, CECIL and WEICK, Circuit Judges.
WEICK, Circuit Judge.
The action in the District Court was to set aside and annul an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission adverse to General Motors Corporation which had filed a complaint for reparations before the Commission alleging that it had been overcharged on shipments of mixed carloads of household appliances from Moraine, Ohio to Miami, Florida. About 150 railroad companies intervened in the action. Jurisdiction of the District Court to review the order of the Commission was claimed to have been conferred by Title 28 U.S.C. §§ 1336, 1398 and Title 49 U.S.C.A. § 17(9).
The District Judge handed down an opinion and order in which he held that he had no jurisdiction in the case. He nevertheless considered the merits of the case as if he had jurisdiction and held that there was a rational basis for the order of the Commission and that it should be sustained. Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co. v. United States, 292 U.S. 282, 54 S.Ct. 692, 78 L.Ed. 1260. He dismissed the complaint. General Motors has appealed to this Court from the order of dismissal.
The Commission now concedes that the District Court had jurisdiction to review its order denying reparations. The United States, which was a defendant in the case, filed a brief in which it asked for a reversal of that part of the judgment of the District Court which denied jurisdiction, but took no position on the merits .of the case.
In our opinion, the fact that General Motors elected under Title 49 U.S. C.A. § 9 to make complaint to the Commission instead of the Court did not preclude it from obtaining judicial review of an adverse order of the Commission. This is implicit in the decision of the Supreme Court in United States v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 337 U.S. 426, 69 S.Ct. 1410, 93 L.Ed. 1451 which held that Congress never intended to vest final jurisdiction in the Commission and that its orders were subject to judicial review. We do not believe it makes any difference that in the present case only the issue of reparations was involved before the Commission. As to this the Supreme Court said:
“Accordingly, we hold that § 9 does not impair the right of shippers to obtain judicial review of adverse Commission orders under § 41(28) merely because the order is sought as a basis for reparations.” Id. p. 440, 69 S.Ct. p. 1418.
See also: Great Lakes Steel Corp. v. United States, 337 U.S. 952, 69 S.Ct. 1530, 93 L.Ed. 1753; Union Pacific Railroad Co. v. Price, 360 U.S. 601, 615, 618, 79 S.Ct. 1351, 3 L.Ed.2d 1460.
In our judgment, the District Court erred in holding that it had no jurisdiction.
This brings us to a consideration of the merits of the case. As we see it, our function is limited to a determination whether the order of the Commission was supported by substantial evidence and correctly applied the law. Great Lakes Steel Corp. v. United States, 220 F.2d 751 (CA 6), cert. denied 350 U.S. 821, 76 S.Ct. 47, 100 L.Ed. 734.
There was no dispute between the parties over the facts in the • case. The representative shipment consisted of a mixed carload of cooling boxes, drying machines, refrigerators and electric stoves. The railroads had computed the freight rates on the shipment applying old exceptions tariffs and ratings which are published for each article in the shipment when shipped in straight carload quantities and had been in force prior to May 30, 1952. There was no carload exception rating. This resulted in a charge of $546.60 which the railroads collected for the shipment. General Motors claims the rates should be computed on new uniform freight classification and rátes which became effective on May 30, 1952. The new class rates rated each item shipped separately, but had a mixed carload rating (Class 55) which was lower. If the charges for the shipment had been computed under the mixed carload rating they would have amounted to $507.94.
This is shown by the application of the rates to the representative shipment as follows:
The only question in the case was which one of the two tariffs applied to the shipment, i. e., the old exceptions tariff and rates or the new uniform classification ratings and new class rates.
The railroads had established the new uniform class rate scale and a uniform class rate schedule to govern those rates on May 30, 1952 in compliance with orders of the Commission. The Commission had made extensive readjustments of classifications and underlying class rate structures and a uniform classification was ordered prepared and applied throughout the United States. Uniform classification ratings were not prescribed by the Commission, but were left for the railroads to establish. The proceedings before the Commission did not involve commodity rates nor exception rates or ratings.
It was contemplated that the exception rates and commodity rates would ultimately be worked into the new uniform classification and uniform class rate scale by the railroads. This was a task of some magnitude which would involve considerable work and would take time to evolve. In order to preserve the exception ratings until this could be done the railroads published a new rule, Item 300-B, which provided as follows:
NON-APPLICATION OF CLASS RATES WHERE A COMMODITY RATE CLASSIFICATION EXCEPTION OF COLUMN RATING IS IN EFFECT.
Class rates published herein from and to all points via all routes are not applicable on any article or commodity when there is in effect a commodity rate, classification exception or column rating between the same points via any route on such article or commodity.
Before this rule became effective it was changed to read as follows:
Class rates published in tariff, as amended, will not apply where there is in effect on a given shipment a commodity rate, classification exception or column rating between the same points via any route.
The reason for the change was that-it was thought the words “on any article or commodity” were ambiguous and might prevent the application of uniform class rates on carload shipments of any article or commodity if there were exceptions applicable on less than carload shipments.
The Commission in considering this rule said:
The defendants’ objective in publishing item 300 was to remove any possible alternation of the uniform class rates where exceptions ratings were established, and the original phrasing of the provision makes that fact abundantly clear. The question then is, did the substitution of ‘on a given shipment’ for ‘on any article or commodity’ so alter the meaning of the provision as to warrant a determination that the original objective also was intended to be changed. Bearing in mind the reason for the amendment of the language, we think that a fair and reasonable interpretation of the provision is that where an exceptions rating or ratings (in the case of mixed-carload quantities) were in effect ‘on a given shipment,’ the uniform class rates could not be considered in determining the applicable charges.
Shippers in other proceedings had previously sought to persuade the Commission to require the railroads to alternate the old exceptions ratings and rates with the new uniform classification and rates and to apply the lower basis or require cancellation of the old exceptions class rates, but the Commission denied such relief.
It is further claimed that neither the Commission or the District Court gave any consideration to Item 5 (Exception to the mixed-carload rule 10 in the Uniform Freight Classification.) This Item states “Except as otherwise provided. * * * ” It was otherwise provided in Item 300-B and hence Item 5 has no application.
The Commission, in holding that the railroads were correct in applying the old exceptions tariffs and rates, construed the applicable tariff provisions in the light of their history and what they were intended to accomplish. We think its decision was supported by substantial evidence and that it correctly applied the rules of law. There was certainly a rational basis for the conclusion which it reached as was held by the District Court. Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co. v. United States, supra.
The judgment of the District Court upholding the order of the Commission and dismissing the complaint is, therefore 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: 0