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:
Chesley A. STEELE, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Rita M. HALEY et al., Defendants, Appellees.
No. 71-1241.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Heard Nov. 2,1971.
Decided Dec. 1, 1971.
Robert F. Sylvia, Boston, Mass., with whom Robert L. Caporale and Fine & Ambrogne, Boston, Mass., were on the brief, for appellant.
Robert P. Sullivan, Lowell, Mass., with whom John L. Connell, Jr., Lowell, Mass., was on the brief, for appellees.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, McENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
COFFIN, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff Chesley A. Steele brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and § 1985, with jurisdiction based on 28 U.S. C. § 1343, to challenge as violative of procedural due process the action of the Westford, Massachusetts, School Committee in dismissing him from the nontenured positions of football coach, athletic director, and head of the department of physical education at Westford Academy, a public high school. He now appeals the district court’s dismissal for failure to exhaust arbitral remedies.
Steele was dismissed on January 12, 1970, without a public hearing or an opportunity to respond to charges against him. On January 15, 1970, the Committee sent Steele a letter indicating the reasons for the dismissal. When Steele sought to invoke arbitration under the collective bargaining agreement between the Westford Teachers Association and the Westford School Committee, the Committee brought suit in Massachusetts Superior Court to restrain arbitration on the ground that the agreement did not cover the positions from which Steele was dismissed. That court ordered arbitration, and the arbitrator awarded reinstatement and reimbursement for lost salary, holding that the Committee had not followed the procedures mandated by the collective bargaining agreement. The Committee’s challenge to that award is now before the Massachusetts Superior Court.
We do not reach the merits of either Steele’s constitutional claim or the defendants’ assertion that, having initiated arbitration, Steele must await the completion of state court challenges to the arbitrator’s award before bringing suit under § 1983. For the reasons discussed below, we conclude that this is a proper case for abstention.
Steele’s federal claim is in a curious posture. Having prevailed thus far under the collective bargaining agreement, he would nevertheless have the federal courts grant substantially the same relief on constitutional grounds to protect him against the possibility that the arbitrator’s award may be vacated by the state court. His fear derives from the opinion of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in DeCanio v. School Committee of Boston, 1970 Mass.Adv.Sh. 1223, 260 N.E.2d 676, appeal dismissed, Fenton v. School Committee of Boston, 401 U.S. 929, 91 S.Ct. 925, 23 L.Ed.2d 209 (1971). But that case holds merely that a hearing before discharge of a probationary teacher is not mandated by Massachusetts statute, the Massachusetts Constitution, or the United States Constitution. In contrast, the arbitrator’s award in the present case was based upon his construction of the collective bargaining agreement. It is by no means clear that the De Canio court will preclude school boards from granting procedural protection to non-tenured teachers by contract. Under Massachusetts law, a school committee “shall * * * contract with the teachers of the public schools. * * * ” M.G.L.A. c. 71, § 38. As respects another instrumentality of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we noted in County of Middlesex v. Gevyn Constr. Co., 450 F.2d 53 (1st Cir., filed Oct. 28, 1971) that the power of towns to contract had been held, sub silentio, to carry with it the power to provide for dispute settlement by arbitration. M.S. Kelliher Co. v. Wakefield, 346 Mass. 645, 195 N.E.2d 330 (1964). While it is surely an open question, we think that there is a substantial possibility that the arbitrator’s award will be upheld.
While we thus abstain from deciding Steele’s federal claim under the Fourteenth Amendment, we direct the district court to retain jurisdiction. As the Supreme Court indicated in Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 244 n. 4, 88 S.Ct. 391, 393, 19 L.Ed.2d 444 (1967), “It is better practice, in a case raising a federal constitutional or statutory claim, to retain jurisdiction, rather than to dismiss. * * * ”
Remanded with directions to retain jurisdiction.
The dismissal did not affect his status i i a tenured physical education teacher.

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