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:
CARINA MERCURY, INC., Appellant, v. Enrique IGARAVIDES, Trustee, Appellee.
No. 6316.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
April 22, 1965.
Wallace Gonzalez Oliver, New York City, with whom Victor House and McConnell, Valdés & Kelley, San Juan, P. R., were on brief, for appellant.
Reuben Barnett, San Juan, P. R., with whom Guillermo A. Cintron Ayuso, San Juan, P. R., was on brief, for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, MARIS. Circuit Judge, and FORD, District Judge.
By special designation.
MARIS, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from the District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. It appears from the record that Carina Mercury, Inc., on December 22, 1962 sold a Ford Thunderbird automobile to Mercury Lifting Service, Inc., under a written conditional sales contract which provided that the conditional vendor should retain title until full payment of the purchase price, which was to be made in twenty-four monthly installments commencing March 1, 1963. The contract was never filed in accordance with the Puerto Rico Conditional Sales Act of April 13, 1916, No. 61, as amended, § 4, 10 L.P.R.A. § 34. The conditional vendee defaulted on the installments due May 1 and June 1,1963 and thereafter the automobile was redelivered to the conditional vendor. On June 12,1963 the conditional vendee instituted proceedings in the district court for an arrangement under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U.S.C.A. § 701 et seq., and on September 25, 1963 was adjudged a bankrupt. The title of the conditional vendor to the automobile was attacked by the trustee in bankruptcy and its return was requested. Whereupon the conditional vendor filed a petition in the district court asking the referee in bankruptcy to enter an order directing the trustee to refrain from further efforts to retrieve the automobile and adjudging the conditional vendor to be entitled thereto. The referee, however, denied the petition, holding that the trustee in bankruptcy was a third party within the meaning of the Puerto Rico Conditional Sales Act against whom the reservation of title in the conditional vendor was void. The district court, upon review, affirmed the referee’s order. This appeal followed.
The order of the district court must be reversed. It will be observed that following default on June 1, 1963 and, as we understand, before the filing of the petition under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act, possession of the automobile in controversy was restored by the conditional vendee to the conditional vendor. Under these circumstances the Puerto Rico Conditional Sales Act of April 13, 1916, No. 61, 10 L.P.R.A. § 31 et seq., upon which the trustee in bankruptcy relies to establish his right to the automobile, can have no application. For that act applies only to conditional sales of goods which are accompanied by delivery to the vendee of the goods contracted to be sold, 10 L.P.R.A. § 33, while here at the time that the trustee’s rights accrued the automobile was not in the possession of the vendee but in the hands of the vendor whose possession was notice to the world of its rights therein and obviated any need for filing or registering the contract specifying them.
The question remains whether the repossession of the automobile by the vendor within four months of the filing of the petition under Chapter XI operated as a preference in favor of the conditional vendor which was voidable at the instance of the trustee. We think it is clear that it did not so operate. For it was not a transfer of the bankrupt’s property but merely a retaking by the conditional vendor of property to which it had held title all along, Finance & Guaranty Co. v. Oppenhimer, 1928, 276 U.S. 10, 48 S.Ct. 209, 72 L.Ed. 443; Federal Finance Corporation v. Reed, 1 Cir. 1924, 296 F. 1; 4 Remington on Bankruptcy § 1727.1, and which under the Puerto Rico Conditional Sales Act it was entitled to retake. 10 L.P.R.A. § 36.
What we have said is based upon our understanding that the automobile in question was retaken by the vendor before the petition under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act was filed. But the record is not wholly clear on this point and if the fact is that the repossession took place after the petition was filed it is still true that the rights of the conditional vendor are superior to those of the trustee in bankruptcy, as we shall show.
Under the Bankruptcy Act the trustee is not a purchaser for value. Zartman v. First National Bank, 1910, 216 U.S. 134, 30 S.Ct. 368, 54 L.Ed. 418. He is vested, by operation of law, with the title of the bankrupt or debtor, as of the date of filing the petition, to all his property, wheresoever located, and has, in addition, the rights on that date of a creditor holding a lien by legal or equitable proceedings. 11 U.S.C.A. § 110; Lewis v. Manufacturers Nat. Bank, 1961, 364 U.S. 603, 81 S.Ct. 347, 5 L.Ed.2d 323. What those rights are is to be determined by the local law, in this case that of Puerto Rico. Bryant v. Swofford Bros. Dry Goods Co., 1909, 214 U.S. 279, 29 S.Ct. 614, 53 L.Ed. 997.
While under the law of Puerto Rico a conditional vendee may be regarded as being for some purposes the owner of the goods conditionally sold, he does not have a title to the goods which he may assert against the conditional vendor. Commercial Credit Co. v. Soto, 1930, 41 P.R.R. 406. In this respect his position is quite different from that of a chattel mortgagor. See Bailey v. Baker Ice Machine Co., 1915, 239 U.S. 268, 271, 36 S.Ct. 50, 60 L.Ed. 275. The Puerto Rico Conditional Sales Act provides that the reservation by the vendor of ownership of goods conditionally sold, accompanied by delivery of the goods contracted to be sold, “shall be void as against subsequent purchasers, pledgees or mortgagees in good faith, or other third parties [terceros],” unless the contract is filed in the municipality where the conditional vendee resides not later than thirty days after the contract is executed. 10 L.P.R.A. §§ 33, 34. As we have seen, the conditional sales contract involved in this case was not filed in accordance with the Puerto Rico law. The question accordingly presents itself as to whether the trustee may be regarded as a subsequent purchaser, mortgagee or pledgee in good faith, or a third party [tercero], as to whom the reservation of title must be held to be void.
We have pointed out that the trustee is not entitled to be treated as a purchaser for value. Obviously he is not a mortgagee or pledgee. The trustee argues, however, that being vested with the rights of a creditor holding a lien by legal or equitable proceedings he must be regarded as a third party [tercero] entitled to the protection of the Conditional Sales Act. We cannot agree. In Commercial Credit Co. v. Soto, 1930, 41 P.R.R. 406, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico said (pp. 406-407):
“We are entirely agreed with the appellant that an attaching creditor is not a third person within the meaning of the law. If I place a piece of furniture to be repaired in the hands of a dealer, it is mine and can not be attached to pay the debts of the dealer. Who are third parties is indicated by our decision in Longpre et al. v. Wolff et al., 23 P.R.R. 13. An attaching creditor acquires no more right to the thing attached than had the debtor. Con-nolley [Conolley] v. Power [70 Cal. App. 70], 232 Pac. 744; 6 C.J. 242-243, notes 96, 97, and 98. The creditor stands in the shoes of the debtor. Specific cases deciding that this principle is applicable to conditional sales are: Finance Corporation of America v. McGhee, 142 S.C. 380, 140 S.E. 691, 55 A.L.R. 1133; American Law Book Co. v. Brunswick Cross-tie & Creosoting Co. [12 Ga. App. 259] 77 S.E. 104; Mergen-thaler Linotype Co. v. Hull [1 Cir. 1916] 239 Fed. 26.”
The rule thus stated, that an attaching creditor acquires no greater rights than the debtor whose property he attaches was reaffirmed in Perez v. Claudio, 1935, 48 P.R.R. 559, a case which involved priority of liens. In that case the court stated (p. 564):
“An attaching creditor is not a third person (tercero) within the meaning of the law, and acquires no greater right to the property attached than had the debtor, whom he succeeds. The Commercial Credit Co. v. Soto, 41 P.R.R. 406. * * * The rights of an attaching creditor with respect to the property attached must be determined in accordance with the condition of the title at the time of the levy.”
The trustee seeks to distinguish Commercial Credit Co. v. Soto from the present case by pointing out that in the Commercial Credit Co. case the conditional sales contract was recorded, albeit in the wrong place, while in the present case the contract was not recorded anywhere. The distinction is without legal significance. Indeed the Court in that case treated the contract as an unrecorded one, thus following the rule that filing a conditional sales contract in the wrong place is ineffective. Sims v. Capitol Refrigeration Co., Inc., 2 Cir. 1961, 294 F.2d 111.
It is thus clear that under the law of Puerto Rico a conditional sales contract passes no title to the conditional vendee and is good, and the reservation of title by the conditional vendor is enforceable, as against the trustee in bankruptcy of the vendee.
The order of the district court will be reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

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