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:
Samuel Joseph WEISGAL, Appellant, v. William French SMITH, Atty. Gen.; Norman A. Carlson; William Garrison; Fred Walker; Donnie Ray Smith; United States of America, Appellees.
No. 84-6582.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued July 19, 1985.
Decided Oct. 16, 1985.
Gerald T. Zerkin, Richmond, Va. (Zerkin, Heard & Scovill, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellant.
Debra J. Prillaman, Asst. U.S. Atty., Richmond, Va. (Elsie L. Munsell, U.S. Atty., Alexandria, Va., on brief), for appel-lees.
Before WINTER, Chief Judge, and RUSSELL and HALL, Circuit Judges.
DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge.
This is a Federal Tort Claims [FTCA] action asserted by way of an amended complaint, which the plaintiff would relate back under provisions of Rule 15(c), Fed.R.Civ.P., to the initial filing of the action in order to avoid the time-bar for such an action stated in 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b). The Magistrate to whom the matter was referred, found that the conditions for “relation back” as set forth in Rule 15(c) were not met and dismissed the FTCA action. The plaintiff has appealed and we affirm.
The plaintiff, an inmate at the Peters-burg (Virginia) Federal Corrections Institution, was stabbed on July 13, 1981 by other inmates of the Institution after he refused to participate in a food-and-work strike. He filed an administrative claim in early 1982 with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to recover for his injuries sustained in that incident. That claim was denied and notice of such final denial was duly mailed the plaintiff on July 16, 1982. Almost six months later he filed pro se a Bivens -type action. In this action, he alleged constitutional violations of the Fourth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and sought individual monetary judgments in varying amounts against five defendants: William French Smith, the United States Attorney General who as such was responsible for the management of the federal prison system; Norman A. Carlson, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons; William Garrison, Warden of the Petersburg Institution; and two officers on the staff of the Institution. The defendants French and Carlson moved to dismiss the action against them and the motion was granted. There has been no appeal from that dismissal.
On October 12, 1983, some months after the dismissal of the action against Smith and Carlson, the plaintiff moved to amend his complaint to state a Federal Tort Claims action (FTCA) and to add the United States as a defendant. That motion was granted. The United States, however, moved to dismiss the action as untimely and dismissal was granted by the Magistrate. The action then proceeded to trial against the Warden and the two prison officers. A verdict was rendered in favor of the defendants. This appeal is directed at the correctness of the Magistrate’s dismissal of plaintiff’s FTCA action as time barred.
The plaintiff concedes that under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), an FTCA action must be instituted within six months of notice of the denial of the plaintiff’s administrative claim and that his amended complaint naming the United States as a defendant and alleging an FTCA action was filed more than a year after notice of the denial of his administrative claim had been given and was facially time barred. It is his thesis on appeal, however, that under Rule 15(c), Fed.R.Civ.P. his amendment adding the FTCA action and changing the party against whom his claim was asserted to the United States related back “to the date of the original pleading.” Three elements must be met before Rule 15(c) relation back will be allowed, even when the result could be extinguishment of the claim: (1) same transaction or occurrence; (2) the new party had notice of the action prior to the expiration of the statute of limitations; and (3) he knew or should have known that but for a mistake in identity the action would have been brought against him. Watson v. Unipress, Inc., 733 F.2d 1386 (10th Cir.1984). The first requirement of “same transaction or occurrence” is admittedly present here. The Magistrate found that the other two requirements for relation back under the Rule were not met. We agree that the second was not met and affirm on that ground. We have no occasion to consider whether the third requirement was satisfied.
Manifestly in this case notice of the institution of the initial action was not given the United States “within the period provided by law for commencing” the FTCA action. The time for filing such action expired on January 17, 1983; in no event can it be said that notice was given the United States or any officer authorized to receive notice on its behalf prior to January 20, 1983. The plaintiff agrees as to this but he premises that, while the Rule plainly provides that relation back depends on “notice” to the added defendant “within the time provided by law for commencing the action” [in this case, six months], it is proper to give the Rule a liberal construction under which the added party will be said to have had notice of institution of the action, since the time for commencement of the action must include an allowance for a reasonable time thereafter for the service of notice. This premise of the plaintiff presents the issue on appeal. The Magistrate refused to depart from the plain language of the Rule and dismissed the action and we agree.
There is a division of the Courts of Appeals on the issue posed by plaintiffs contentions. This division in the Circuit Courts was commented on and certain of the decisions on the issue were cited by Mr. Justice White in his opinion dissenting from denial of certiorari in Cooper v. United States Postal Service, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 2034, 85 L.Ed.2d 316 (1985). Though this Circuit has not passed on the question, there is a difference on the point among the district courts of this Circuit. In Swann Oil, Inc. v. M/S Vassilis, 91 F.R.D. 267, 269-70 (E.D.N.C.1981), the court held the period within which notice must be received includes statute of limitations plus “the reasonable time allowed for service”; in Holden v. R.J. Reynolds Industries, 82 F.R.D. 157, 162 (M.D.N.C.1979), the court reached the conclusion that the notice must be given within the limitations period. We, however, feel that the question is one controlled by the express language of the Rule.
The language of the Rule requires, in plain and clear terms, that the notice be given “within the limitations period.” It includes no reasonable allowance for service beyond that “limitations period.” To include “time for service” as an addition to the six-months limit in the Rule in an FTCA action would demand a rewriting of the Rule. It is our responsibility to apply the Rule as it is written, especially when its language is free from doubt or ambiguity, as is this Rule, even though such an application in the rare case might work a harsh result. Schiavone v. Fortune, 750 F.2d 15, 18, 19 (3rd Cir.1985); Cooper v. U.S. Postal Service, 740 F.2d 714, 717 (9th Cir.1984), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 2034, 85 L.Ed.2d 316 (1985). And this is what the drafters of the Rule intended. Thus in the Notes of the Advisory Committee it is said that the notice must be received “within the applicable limitations period.” Advisory Committee Note, paragraph 5, F.R.C.P. 15(c). The application of Rule 15(c) in the absence of proper notice to the United States within the limitations period would result in prejudice by eliminating the statute of limitations defense. Stewart v. United States, 655 F.2d 741, 742 (7th Cir.1981).
In reaching the conclusion that we have, we are not merely following what we conceive to be the intention of the drafters of the Rule but we are also observing the admonition of the Supreme Court in Baldwin County v. Brown, 466 U.S. 147, —, 104 S.Ct. 1723, 1726, 80 L.Ed.2d 196, 202 (1984), wherein the Court said:
Procedural requirements established by Congress for gaining access to the federal courts are not to be disregarded by courts out of a vague sympathy for particular litigants. As we stated in Mohasco Corp. v. Silver, 447 U.S. 807, 826, 100 S.Ct. 2486 [2497] 65 L.Ed.2d 532 (1980), “[I]n the long run, experience teaches that strict adherence to the procedural requirements specified by the legislature is the best guarantee of evenhanded administration of the law.”
The judgment of the district court is accordingly
AFFIRMED.
. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971).
. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2671, et seq.

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