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:
WILLIAMS v. FAVRET.
No. 11840.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
May 13, 1947.
Rehearing Denied June 17, 1947.
McCORD, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
P. Z. Jones and Ross R. Barnett, both of Jackson, Miss., for appellant.
John Harvey Thompson, of Jackson, Miss., for appellee.
Before HUTCHESON, McCORD, and WALLER, Circuit Judges.
HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.
As appellant stated it in substance in his complaint and in haec verba in his brief, the suit was “for damages caused by defendant’s refusal to contract with him for electrical work on a navy contract at Gulf-port, Mississippi”, which had been awarded to defendant as successful bidder.
The claim was that though he had invited a bid from plaintiff, had used it in bidding and obtaining the contract, and had accepted it, defendant had failed and refused to enter into a subcontract with plaintiff.
Defendant admitted that in making his bid as general contractor he had received and used plaintiff’s bid, and that the general contract had been awarded to him, but he categorically denied that he, or anyone acting with his authority, had ever accepted plaintiffs bid or otherwise obligated defendant to subcontract the electrical work to plaintiff.
At the conclusion of plaintiff’s evidence, the defendant moved for judgment, and the district judge, before whom the case was tried without a jury, sustained the motion, made findings of fact and of rule, and entered judgment for defendant.
Plaintiff is here insisting that the facts taken as a whole establish that a contract resulted and that it was error to deny him recovery. As his brief presents it, “The action was based upon an exchange of telegrams alleged by appellant to constitute an offer and acceptance which created the agreement to award him a subcontract”. The argument is that while the telegrams of the 4th and 6th did not constitute an unconditional acceptance of the bid, they constituted a conditional acceptance, the condition being that defendant, as general contractor, be awarded the contract. Citing Louisiana Civil Code Sections and cases construing them, plaintiff develops his argument thus: The obligation was a sus-pensive obligation so long as the contract from the government was not awarded to appellee under his bid, but the awarding of the contract to appellee, converted the conditional into an unconditional obligation.
We cannot agree. Plaintiff’s bids to the several contractors weré offers expressly made to continue until June 6th, and then be withdrawn in the absence of advices from the contractors that they were used in the figuring. Such advices were sent, and the bids remained open offers until accepted or withdrawn. That an offer does not ripen into a contract until acceptance is hornbook law. Plaintiff recognizes that this is so. He seeks "to avoid its effect here by importing into the exchange of telegrams a conditional acceptance. Unfortunately for plaintiff, it is just as much hornbook law that where a contract is claimed as resulting from an offer and an acceptance, the offer must be clear, definite and complete, and the acceptance must be in the terms of the offer. The plaintiff’s telegram of the 4th was not a conditional offer. It was an absolute one to continue under the condition fixed until accepted. Defendant’s telegram of the 6th sent in direct response to plaintiff’s of the 4th contains nothing from which an acceptance of the offer, conditional or otherwise, can be implied.
The district judge was right in holding that the exchange of telegrams constituted no contract. He was right too in holding that plaintiff did not prove a contract resting in parol. The judgment is affirmed.
Plaintiff testified: that he, a general electrical contractor, received invitations from general contractors, including the defendant, to submit quotations on ihe electrical work for the naval station, that by wire, as follows, he submitted estimates to all of them:
“Item 1 Base Bid $17,500.00
Item 2 Deduct 275.00
Item 3 Deduct 600.00
“If our estimate used wire us collect prior to June 6 or else same is withdrawn.”
•and that defendant and another contractor had wired him that his bid w'as used, defendant’s wire being as follows:
“June 6
We used your bid for wiring on barracks and dispensary Gulfport.”
" He testified further: that later on he 'learned, though not from defendant, that defendant was low bidder; that still latter, Harold Favret, defendant’s son, told him that it would probably be two or .three weeks before the contract would come through and when it did. plaintiff would get the subcontract; that not getting the contract, he wrote defendant on June 26th that he would like to receive the subcontract as early "as possible so .as to begin getting ready for perform.■ance; and that defendant replied: “Acknowledging receipt of your letter of tlio 26íh inst. The electrical work has been let to the Busy Electric Co. Your bid, after given full consideration was found ;to be incomplete.”
He further testified that his bid was •not incomplete; that it followed the bid forms, plans and specifications. Harold Favret, called by plaintiff, testified that he was an estimator and that he was mot authorized lo make contracts, and no proof was offered by plaintiff showing, or tending to show that lie was so authorized. In addition, Favret denied plaintiff’s testimony' that he had stated that plaintiff would receive the electrical subcontract. In explanation of the June 6 telegram, he testified that he sent it in compliance with the request in plaintiff’s telegram in order to keep the offer of the bid open.
“ (2) That the invitation for bids on the electrical work as shown by the card, Exhibit P2 to the deposition of Harold Favret, and the telegram of June 5th from the plaintiff to the defendant, and the answer of the defendant to the plaintiff by telegram of June 6, 1944, do not constitute a contract; that, the words in the telegram of June 6th from defendant to plaintiff, reading as follows; ‘We used your bids for wiring on barracks and dispensary Gulfport’ did not amount to an acceptance of plaintiff’s offer; and that, therefore, no written contract was entered into.
“(3) That the employee of the defendant, Harold Favret, was not authorized to accept an order or to bind the defendant for the work, or to contract; and that, therefore, the said Harold Favret did not ratify and contract on behalf of the plaintiff as against the defendant.
“That the employee Christopher was not authorized to enter into any contract or ratify any contract for the defendant in favor of plaintiff.”
“(3) The Court is of the opinion that under the law no contract, written or verbal, was entered into between the plaintiff and the defendant.
“(2) That the relief sought by the complainant should be denied.”
2021, 2026, 2028; Decker v. Renaudin, 10 La.App. 725, 122 So. 600; Monteleone v. Blache, 11 La.App. 99, 120 So. 900.

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: 1