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 respondents in the case that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
Joseph W. HARNER, Appellant, v. JOHN McSHAIN, INC., OF MARYLAND, a corporation, Appellee.
No. 11933.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued March 8, 1968.
Decided April 30, 1968.
Clark B. Frame, Morgantown, W. Va. (Joseph W. Harner, in pro. per., on brief), for appellant.
Albert M. Morgan, Morgantown, W. Va., for appellee.
Before BRYAN and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges, and MacKENZIE, District Judge.
CRAVEN, Circuit Judge:
This is a negligence action brought in a West Virginia state court and removed to the federal district court by reason of diversity of citizenship. The sole issue presented on appeal is whether the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence “as a matter of law.”
The case was tried before a jury which returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $8,000. The trial judge thereafter set the verdict aside and entered judgment n. o. v. for the defendant. Fed. R.Civ.P. 50(b). In so doing the trial judge stated that he had no trouble in finding ample evidence to support the jury’s finding of negligence. But as to the issue of contributory negligence he concluded “that the plaintiff did not on the occasion of the accident exercise the degree of care for his own safety that an ordinarily prudent person would have exercised in like or similar circumstances.” We do not agree that failure to exercise due care was the only permissible inference and reverse.
On June 13, 1966, Mr. Harner, a construction painter by trade, was injured when he fell through uncompleted flooring on the top floor of a three story building then under construction. On this floor steel joists had been laid approximately two feet apart at right angles to the heavier I-beams and had been welded into the I-beams. Then sheets of perforated steel lathe, two feet wide and six to twelve feet long, had been laid perpendicular to and on top of the joists. The lathe was laid so that it overlapped and completely covered the joists. In four places per sheet, the edge of the lathe had been wired down to the nearest joist with 16 gauge galvanized wire which is thirty-six inches long and doubled. The floor in question had been only partially lathed. The last sheet of lathe (bordering on the unlathed area) had been laid so that it fell approximately one and one-half inches short of the joist next to the unlathed area. This sheet had not been wired down to the joist. Consequently, as one of the witnesses put it, anyone who stepped on the last sheet of lathe would fall through it as through a trap door.
In the couse of his duties Mr. Harner walked across the unlathed area of the floor on an I-beam, going in the direction of the lathed area. When he reached the lathed area, he stepped out diagonally onto the unwired sheet of lathe and fell through. It was established, as previously indicated, that defendant was guilty of negligence proximately causing plaintiff’s injury in failing to wire the last sheet of lathe to the adjacent joist.
In finding Mr. Harner contributorily negligent “as a matter of law,” the trial judge properly referred to the West Virginia substantive rule that an invitee entering on the premises of another has a duty to discover open and obvious dangers. Petros v. Kellas, 146 W.Va. 619, 122 S.E.2d 177 (1961). However, we can find no West Virginia decision where, on facts comparable to the situation before us, the plaintiff was found to have been guilty of contributory negligence as “a matter of law.” “The ruling will, in truth, depend entirely on the nature of the evidence offered in the ease at hand; and it is seldom possible that a ruling can serve as a precedent.” 9 Wigmore, Evidence § 2494, at 296 (3d Ed. 1940).
A brief narration of the evidence most favorable to the plaintiff, Grombach v. Oerlikon Toll and Arms Corp. of America, 276 F.2d 155 (4th Cir. 1960), will suffice to show that whether the danger was open and visible or whether plaintiff in the exercise of due care should have seen it, is a question upon which reasonable minds may differ.
Mr. Thorne, general superintendent for the appellee, testified that he saw “many employees of all crafts walking over the lathe,” and that he could not recall ever warning anyone not to walk on it. The superintendent for Somerset Steel Erection Company, the steel subcontractor, testified that when the “lathers” left for lunch or quit work in a particular area they would wire down the lathe laid so as to make the area safe. Upon questioning by the trial court whether he could have seen the absence of tie wires had he looked, Mr. Harner replied: “I doubt it for you would have to look pretty close. You’ve got black mesh, you’ve got a black bar joist, and you take half an inch — I wouldn’t have seen it unless I got down real low and looked.”
The question of contributory negligence in this case is not a question of law but is simply a question of opinion or judgment in regard to a particular set of facts. See 9 Wigmore, Evidence § 2495 (3rd Ed. 1940). In a landmark decision generally interpreted as broadening the right of jury determination in close cases, (See Planters Mfg. Co. v. Protect. Mut. Insurance Company, 5 Cir., 380 F.2d 869 (1967)) the Supreme Court said: “whenever facts are in dispute or the evidence is such that fair-minded men may draw different inferences, a measure of speculation and conjecture is required on the part of those whose duty it is to settle the dispute by choosing what seems to them to be the most reasonable inference.” Lavender v. Kurn, 327 U.S. 645, 66 S.Ct. 740, 90 L.Ed. 916 (1946). And on another occasion, where the jury could reasonably have reached an opposite result, the Court said: “There was evidence from which a jury could reach the conclusion that petitioner was totally and permanently disabled. That was enough.” Berry v. United States, 312 U.S. 450, 61 S.Ct. 637, 85 L.Ed. 945 (1941).
“In federal courts, at least, the Seventh Amendment writes into the basic charter the belief that trial by jury is the normal and preferable mode of disposing of issues of fact in civil cases * * *. The Supreme Court has been zealous to safeguard, perhaps even to enlarge, the function of the jury.” Wright, Federal Courts § 92 at 350 (1963).
That the district judge’s viewpoint on the issue of contributory negligence was an entirely reasonable one does not matter. There was substantial evidence supporting the opposite conclusion and that was enough to require leaving to the jury the partly speculative and conjectural task of choosing between permissible inferences.
On remand the district court will reinstate the verdict.
Reversed.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0