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:
MOY CHEE CHONG v. WEEDIN, Commissioner of Immigration.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
September 4, 1928.
No. 5448
Fred H. Lysons, of Seattle, Wash., and Bellew, Seland, Dillon & Schendel, of Minneapolis, Minn., for appellant.
Thos. P. Revelle, U. S. Atty., and Anthony Savage, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Seattle, Wash. (John F. Dunton, U. S. Immigration Service, of Seattle, Wash., on the brief), for appellee.
Before GILBERT, RUDKIN, and DIETRICH, Circuit Judges.
GILBERT, Circuit Judge.
The appellant, who was bom in China, was denied admission when he sought to enter the UniiA ed States on his claim that he was the son of Moy You On. It was not denied that the alleged father was an American citizen. The ground of rejection was doubt of the alleged relationship, based upon discrepancies in the testimony. The ease is here on appeal from the judgment of the court below, denying a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In the petition it was alleged that the discrepancies were inadvertent and unimportant; that the immigration officials failed to afford opportunity to explain the same, and arbitrarily and capriciously gave the wrong construction thereto, and arbitrarily, capriciously, wrongfully, and unfairly rejected the application. The petition also brought in question the official capacity of the members of the Board of Special Inquiry, and alleged that the official oath required by law was not taken by any member of the board at any time subsequent to his designation and appointment on said board.
There were several discrepancies between the testimony of the appellant’s alleged, brother, Moy Yot Wing, given at Seattle, December 29, 1921, and the testimony of the applicant on his application for admission. Some of the discrepancies may be disregarded, as of minor importance. We find it necessary to consider but two of them:
Moy Yot Wing, who was 24 years of age, testified that he left sehool at the age of 20, and that he had been working in the rice fields in China ever since. The appellant, however, testified bn September 21, 1927, that Moy Yot Wing came to this country as soon as he left sehool, and he was positive in his statement that his said brother never did any work in China. Appellant’s counsel attempts to explain this discrepancy, and suggests that the fact might have been that the brother’s working place was out of view of the home, or that the work was done during hours when the appellant was in sehool and without his knowledge, and that rice culture would occupy but about eight weeks in each year. But the appellant’s testimony was that he .attended the Poy Gon sehool for 15 or 16 years prior to coming to this country, and that Moy Yot Wing attended the same school. Counsel’s explanation is far from convincing. It is not conceivable that the appellant could have been ignorant of the fact that his alleged brother had been out of school for four years before coming to the United States, and that he had been working in the rice fields.
The other discrepancy to be noted was in the testimony concerning the appellant’s grandmother. The appellant testified that his paternal grandfather’s wife was named Yee Shee, that she was living in his house, and that he saw her just before he left China for the United States, and that she was in the sitting room when he bade her goodby. Direetly contrary to this is the testimony of the alleged father and brother, who testified in 1922 and 1921 that Yee Shee had then been dead eight or nine years, and on October 4, 1927, and November 3, 1927, at Minneapolis, Minn., they stated that she had been dead 15 or 16 years. About a month after the statements were taken at Minneapolis, the appellant was recalled before the Board of Special Inquiry, and he testified that his paternal grandfather died about 16 years before, and that his paternal grandmother Yee Shee died a short time thereafter. When confronted with his previous testimony, he stated that he had made a mistake; but he offered no explanation of the mistake. It is fairly inferable that in the meantime he had received news from Minneapolis advising him of the statements made by his alleged father and brother. The discrepancies in the two particulars just adverted to are of such importance as to justify the rejection of the appellant’s application. The fact that, when testifying on September 21, 1927, the appellant, in answer to the question, “Who is living at your house at the present time?” answered, “My mother, my two nephews, my wife, and two sons,” and made no mention of his grandmother, is not sufficient in itself to destroy the significance of the discrepancy.
As to the qualification of the members of the Board of Special Inquiry, it is shown by the records of the Seattle Immigration office that each of the members was duly designated to serve on said board in compliance with section 153, 8 USCA, which provides as follows:' “Boards of Special Inquiry shall be appointed by the Commissioner of Immigration or inspector in charge at the various ports of arrivab as may be necessary for the prompt determination of all eases of immigrants ‘detained at such ports under the provisions of the law. Each board shall consist of three members, who shall be selected from such of the immigrant officials in the service as the Commissioner General of Immigration, with the approval of the Secretary of Labor, shall from time to time designate as qualified to serve on such boards.” The statute contains no .provision that the members of such a board shall take an oath of office, but section 102, 8 USCA, authorizes the Commissioner General of Immigration to establish such rules and regulations as he shall deem best calculated for carrying out the provisions of section 153. One of the rules so established provides: “Every person appointed to serve on a board of special inquiry shall first subscribe to an oath of offiee.” And the immigration officials who composed the hoard in the present-case had taken the prescribed oath that “I will use my best endeavors as a member of such board to enforce the laws of the United States relating to the admission or exclusion of certain classes of aliens, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the offiee mentioned.”
It is contended that the oath so subscribed was insufficient to authorize the members of the board to hear and pass upon the present case, and that the rule requires them to subscribe to an oath preliminary to each particular hearing before them as a Board of Special Inquiry. We find no merit in the contention. Judge Neterer rejected it in Ex parte Hing (D. C.) 22 F. (2d) 554. The provision of the statute that “regularly constituted boards may be detailed from other stations for temporary service at such port” is inconsistent with that view of the meaning of the rule. The oath prescribed is obviously an oath of office, and the rule contemplates that the immigration officials at each port, who have qualified as such, shall constitute a standing Board of Special Inquiry. Such is the construction placed upon the law by the officials whose duty it is to interpret and administer it, and that interpretation would be binding upon us, if we entertained doubt, as we do not, upon the question here involved.
The judgment is affirmed.

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