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:
HI-G, INCORPORATED, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. ST. PAUL FIRE AND MARINE INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 7016.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
March 27, 1968.
Robert F. Sylvia, Boston, Mass., with whom Fine & Ambrogne, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellant.
Lionel H. Perlo, Boston, Mass., with whom Jacob J. Locke, and Ficksman & Conley, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, Mc-ENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This diversity action to recover on an insurance policy covering “direct physical loss * * * or damage * * * from any external cause” should, conced.edly, result in a finding for the insured unless barred by the policy’s exclusion clause. The presently material portion of that clause is as follows:
“Loss or damage caused by or resulting from dampness of atmosphere, dryness of atmosphere, extremes or changes of temperature, shrinkage, evaporation, loss of weight, rust, contamination, change in flavor or color or texture or finish, unless such loss or damage is caused directly by fire, lightening, windstorm, hail, explosion, riot or civil commotion, aircraft, vehicles other than transporting conveyances, bursting of pipes or apparatus, vandalism, malicious mischief, theft, attempted theft or casualty occurring to a vessel or other vehicle used in transporting the property.”
The goods in question, a number of small electro-mechanical relays, were being subjected to heat and a vacuum inside an oven in preparation for the introduction of a preservative gas when, because of a mishap, oil vapor entered the oven. As a result the internal and external surfaces of the relays became coated with' an oil film which proved to be nonremovable, destroying their usefulness. The district court, sitting without jury, found that the goods had been “contaminated” by the oil within the meaning of the exclusion clause, and entered judgment for the defendant. Plaintiff appeals.
Plaintiff asserts that a common meaning of the verb “contaminate” is to introduce a foreign substance effecting a deleterious change in the product. This is true enough. It concedes, however, as it must, that a product is commonly spoken of as contaminated when the foreign substance merely injures its usefulness without affecting the original physical characteristics. Milk rendered unfit by the introduction of bacteria is contaminated, but so is it by the commingling of an inactive substance which makes it unacceptable to the eye or tongue. We agree with the district court, 283 F.Supp. 211 that “while the introduction of an * * * [undesirable] element may change the product itself, it is not essential to contamination that it do so.” Indeed, no dictionary we have found suggests otherwise.
Plaintiff does not so much deny this as reply that if a word has two common meanings it is ambiguous, and hence the policy is to be construed against the company. This proves too much. Applied literally, the company would always lose, for the insured could always insist upon whatever was the nonapplicable meaning in the particular case. Rather, the rule must be that if both meanings are commonly understood and equally familiar, both must apply unless there is some reason for selecting only one.
Under the reach of this clause, unless the originating external cause was fire, lightning, windstorm, vandalism, theft or other listed cause, the policy excluded among others, all losses due to dampness, dryness of atmosphere, change of temperature, shrinkage, loss of weight, rust and contamination. We cannot see how anyone could reasonably think that whether the contaminant entered into a chemical reaction with the spoiled goods was in any way significant. Cf. American Cas. Co. of Reading, Pa. v. Myrick, 5 Cir., 1962, 304 F.2d 179, 96 A.L.R.2d 1352. Even apart from the broad context of this clause, common usage does not imply separate meanings divided by this factor.
The district court may also have been correct in relying on another exclusion provision in the policy, concerning property “being actually worked upon,” but we find it unnecessary to reach that question.
Affirmed.
Whether Connecticut or Minnesota law applies is unclear, but the parties agree that both states read insurance contracts in the usual way.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0