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:
UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Leon NASH, Appellant.
No. 701, Docket 33589.
United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.
Argued June 13, 1969.
Decided July 14, 1969.
Certiorari Denied Nov. 24, 1969.
See 90 S.Ct. 375.
Jerome J. Londin, New York City (Carro, Spanbock & Londin, and Allen Green, New York City, of counsel), for appellant.
Frank M. Tuerkheimer, Asst. U. S. Atty., New York City (Robert M. Morgenthau, U. S. Atty. for Southern Dist. of New York, New York City, and Charles P. Sifton, Asst. U. S. Atty., of counsel), for appellee.
Before MOORE, SMITH and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
MOORE, Circuit Judge:
Leon Nash appeals from an order of the United States District Court denying his motion to set aside a verdict against him which resulted in his conviction on five counts of an indictment charging him with conspiracy to sell unregistered stock and with the sale of stock by fraud. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of one year and one day and fined $500. His conviction was affirmed by this Court. United States v. Hayurtin, 398 F.2d 944 (2d Cir. 1968).
Thereafter, Nash moved to set aside the verdict on the ground that the alternate jurors had not been discharged in accordance with Rule 24(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. A hearing on his motion was held and his motion denied.
Nash claims that he was denied a fair trial because, as he alleges, there were communications between members of the regular jury and retained alternates during the jury deliberations. The court below, after three days of hearings, found:
“1. There is no credible evidence that during the three days of the jury deliberations any communications or conversations took place between the regular jury and the alternates, save for possibly an occasional distant wave or common salutation of greeting as the regular jurors and the alternate jurors went their respective ways in the restaurants at which they had their meals.
“2. The directions of the court for segregation of the regular jurors and retained alternates during deliberations were maintained by the marshals throughout the deliberations in the court house and outside thereof at such places as restaurants and in the hotel where the jurors were sequested [sic] during the nights.
“3. There is not a scintilla of evidence that the defendant Leon Nash was prejudiced by anything which occurred or failed to occur during the deliberations of the jury.”
The record amply supports the District Court’s findings. However, Nash argues that, even accepting the court’s findings, he “ran the risk of having his guilt determined by the three alternates in addition to the regular jurors” because the trial judge at his criminal trial did not dismiss the alternates after the regular jurors retired to consider the verdict. In short, he contends that he was prejudiced per se by the failure to discharge the alternates. Yet, this court in affirming his conviction rejected this very contention. 398 F.2d at 950, 951. The risk this court was referring to, id. at 950, was the risk of impermissible contact. The record is barren of any prejudicial contact. Nash cannot be found to have run the risk of having his guilt determined by anyone other than the twelve regular jurors.
United States v. Virginia Erection Corp., 335 F.2d 868 (4th Cir. 1964), cited by appellant, is inapposite. In that case an alternate juror spent the entire period during jury deliberations in the jury room with the twelve regular jurors and was, therefore, in a position to influence discussion and deliberation. Such contact, in fact any significant contact, is absent here.
Finally, Nash challenges three discretionary rulings by the District Court (1) limiting the hearing to the possible contact between alternates and regulars during deliberations and prohibiting inquiry into such contacts prior to deliberations, (2) preventing Nash’s lawyer from inquiring into the substance of a telephone call between one of the alternates and a regular juror prior to the hearing, and (3) ending the hearing before the third alternate could be called. The record indicates that the scope of inquiry was properly restricted by the court below which sought to prevent unnecessary fishing expeditions by appellant’s lawyer and improper efforts to undermine the jury’s verdict. Since the claimed prejudice was the alleged impairment of the jury’s deliberations, rulings (1) and (2) were clearly correct. The challenged telephone conversation between a regular juror and an alternate occurred after the trial had ended but before the hearing below. The claim that the hearing was prematurely terminated is without substance. The fact is that no offer of proof was made as to what the testimony of the third alternate would have been and the judge was well within his discretion in concluding that her testimony would have been cumulative. Significantly, after the examination of the last witness was concluded, Nash’s lawyer, after conferring with his client, informed the court he had no further witnesses. It was only after the judge reminded him about the third alternate that he stated he wished to call her. The statement that Nash’s counsel had no other witnesses and the absence of any offer of proof as to the significance of that testimony completely rebut the contention that the court below exceeded its discretion in terminating the hearing when it did.
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: 1