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:
Alfred PLAYER, Appellant, v. William F. STEINER, Warden, Maryland House of Correction, Appellee.
No. 8171.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued Nov. 15, 1960.
Decided Nov. 17, 1960.
Stephen D. Moses, Baltimore, Md. (Court-assigned counsel), for appellant.
James H. Norris, Jr., Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen. of Maryland (C. Ferdinand Sybert, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, on brief), for ap-pellee.
Before SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, and HAYNSWORTH and BOREMAN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This is an appeal from a denial, without a hearing, of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus by a state court prisoner.
Player was convicted upon a charge of housebreaking, from which no appeal was taken. Later, he filed a petition under Maryland’s Post Conviction Procedure Act, Code 1957, art. 27, § 645A et seq., in which he contended that he had requested his counsel to appeal his conviction, but that he had been denied the opportunity to. obtain new counsel and to take an appeal by actions of the warden in whose custody he was held. This petition was denied after a hearing in which Player was represented by court-appointed counsel.
Player applied to the Court of Appeals of Maryland for leave to appeal, in which he asserted that the evidence did not prove a forceful entry. This was the ground upon which the petition under the Post Conviction Procedure Act was originally filed, but it had been abandoned after consultation by Player with his court-appointed counsel, and by amendment the petition was changed to raise only the question of the asserted denial of the right of appeal from the original conviction. Leave to appeal was denied, therefore, upon the ground that the question of sufficiency of the evidence had not been effectively raised in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. Player v. Warden, 222 Md. 619, 159 A.2d 852.
Thereafter Player applied to Chief Judge Bruñe of the Court of Appeals of Maryland for a writ of habeas corpus. This petition was transferred for a hearing by a judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City. Judge Warnken, of that Court, dismissed the petition.
At the time of the hearing in the District Court, there had been no application to the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals of Maryland to review its decision in the proceedings under the Post Conviction Procedure Act, or to the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City to review Judge Warnken’s denial of a writ of habeas corpus. We are informed that, while this appeal was pending, Player did file an untimely petition in the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals of Maryland, and that this petition was denied on October 17, 1960. Player v. Steiner, 81 S.Ct. 108.
From the foregoing, it clearly appears that Player has not exhausted his state remedies. The question he seeks to present here was not presented to the Circuit Court for Montgomery County and his application for leave to appeal upon the ground he now urges was denied by the Maryland Court of Appeals upon the . ground that it had not been presented to> the lower court. After denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus by Judge Warnken, he made no effort to have that decision reviewed in any court. The District Court properly denied the petition without a hearing, since it plainly appears that state remedies have not been exhausted. Darr v. Burford, 339 U.S. 200, 70 S.Ct. 587, 94 L.Ed. 761.
This appeal was filed without a certificate of probable cause from the District Judge. After considering the record and hearing court-appointed counsel, the members of this Court find no merit in the appeal. The appeal will be dismissed for want of a certificate of probable cause to appeal.
Appeal dismissed.

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