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:
MANNION et al. v. PENN.
(Court of Appeals of District of Columbia.
Submitted March 12, 1925.
Decided April 6, 1925.
Petition for Rehearing Denied April 18, 1925.)
No. 1734.
1. Patents <§=>II2(I) — Junior parties in interference proceeding can deríve no benefit from fact that patent has been inadvertently issued to them pending senior party’s application.
Junior parties in interference proceeding can derive no benefit from fact that patent has been inadvertently issued to them pending senior party’s application.
2. Patents <§=>91 (4)— Diligence of junior parties in interference proceeding in perfecting invention, entitling them to priority, held not shown.
In interference proceeding, involving priority of patent consisting of plug of resilient material, designed to clean condenser tubes, evidence showing early experimentation by junior parties held not to show diligence in perfecting invention, entitling them to priority.
Appeal from Commissioner of Patents.
Interference proceeding involving priority of invention between Marion Penn, senior party, and Martin Mannion and Robert C. Arthur, junior parties. Prom a decision granting priority to the senior party, the junior parties appeal.
Affirmed.
J. E. Edson and W. L. Symons, both of Washington, D. C., for appellants.
W. R. Kennedy, of New York City, for appellee.
Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB and VAN ORSDEL, Associate Justices.
VAN ORSDEL, Associate Justice.
The junior parties, Mannion and Arthur, appeal from the decision of the Commissioner of Patents awarding priority of invention to appellee, Penn. The invention set out in the claims of the issue is described in the opinion of the Commissioner as follows:
“The invention relates to a plug designed to be forced by water or compressed air through condenser tubes for the purpose of cleaning the same. The plug in shape resembles a spool. Its flanged end portions act as wipers which wipe the sediment from the inner surface of the tube and expel it from the end thereof as the plug is forced through the tube.”
Some of the counts state that the plug is made of resilient material, some that the intermediate portion is grooved, some that the intermediate portion tapers towards the flanges, and some that the flanged end portions have a greater diameter than the intemiediate portions.
Mannion and Arthur filed their application July 1, 1921; Penn filed March 28, 1921. A patent inadvertently was issued to Mannion and Arthur during the pendency of Penn’s application. The burden of proof, therefore, rests upon Mannion and Arthur, the junior parties, since they can derive no benefit from the fact that they are patentees.
Mannion and Arthur rely chiefly upon the making and testing of plugs made of wood with disks nailed to the ends. These plugs, it appears, were used to clean tubes of a condenser in 1918. The wooden plugs, however, proved practically worthless, since they would split in the operation. The counts of the issue, however, have little, if any, reference to the wooden plugs, but are limited to either an elastic plug or a plug with the intermediate portion between the flanges grooved. Mannion and Arthur produced evidence to the effect that, at the time the wooden leather plugs were tested, they had in contemplation a plug composed of rubber. The tribunals below held that, even assuming this testimony to be correct, Mannion and Arthur had not been diligent in perf ecting the invention, and could not claim a reduction to practice prior to their filing date. That they were lacking in diligence in this particular when Penn came into the field, is indubitably established. In this view of the case, the concurring decisions of the tribunals of the Patent Office, awarding priority to Penn, are correct.
The decision of the Commissioner of Patents 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: 2