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:
The PORT OF PORTLAND, a municipal corporation, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. AN ISLAND IN the COLUMBIA RIVER et al., Defendants-Appellants.
No. 71-2482.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
May 25, 1973.
Rehearing Denied June 19, 1973.
See also D.C., 315 F.Supp. 1160.
Alfred A. Hampson, of Williams, Montague, Stark, Hiefield & Norville, Portland, Or., for defendants-appellants.
Slade Gorton, Atty. Gen., Theodore 0. Torve, Asst. Atty. Gen., Olympia, Or., Robert L. Myers, of Shuler, Rankin, Myers, Walsh & Ragen, Duane Yergeer, of Vergeer, Samuels, Roehr & Sweek, Portland, Or., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before CHAMBERS, ELY and WRIGHT, Circuit Judges.
EUGENE A. WRIGHT, Circuit Judge:
Sand Island, in the Columbia River, was the object of an action to quiet title which gave rise to this appeal. An Interstate Compact in 1958 between Washington and Oregon placed it within the latter state. We are concerned with its status before that date.
The district court held that the island was within the State of Oregon at all times in question. We find the district court applied the wrong legal standard and we must reverse and remand for a new trial.
Sand Island emerged in the Columbia River as the result of alluvial deposits which first appeared on charts as sand bars and shoal water after both Oregon and Washington had been admitted to the Union. The island even now is not entirely stationary, but has remained in its general location for many years.
The plaintiff, a municipal corporation of the State of Oregon, claims title to the island under a 1970 deed from the State of Oregon. The defendant-appellants claim title under a 1929 deed from the State of Washington. If that instrument was effective to convey the island to the appellants’ predeeessor-in-interest, then the Port of Portland was not entitled to a decree quieting title in its favor. If the State of Washington owned Sand Island in 1929, it is conceded that its deed at that time was effective.
The boundary of the State of Oregon was established by the Oregon Admission Act of 1859, 11 Stat. 383. The Act describes the boundary as follows:
“Beginning one marine league at sea due west from the point where the forty-second parallel of north latitude intersects the same; thence northerly, at the same distance from the line of the coast, lying west and opposite the State, including all islands within the jurisdiction of the United States to a point due west and opposite the middle of the north ship channel of the Columbia River; thence easterly, to and wp the middle channel of said river, and, where it is divided by islands, up the middle of the widest channel thereof, to a point near Fort Walla-Walla. .” (Emphasis supplied.)
The italicized part of the boundary definition applies here. The district court concluded that the 1929 boundary between Washington and Oregon was the middle of the channel of the Columbia running north of Sand Island because the river was divided by an island and the widest channel of the river was to the north of Sand Island.
The appellants contend that the district court misread the statutory boundary definition and they urge that the “widest channel test” applies only when the “main channel” is divided by one or more islands. The lower court made no finding either that the main channel was divided by Sand Island or that the main channel in 1929 ran north of Sand Island. For that reason appellants urge that the judgment must be reversed.
As we have noted, we agree that the judgment cannot stand. Our reasons are quite apart from the resolution of the issue presented by the parties on the proper antecedent of the word “thereof” in the boundary definition. In our view the lower court erred in applying the “widest channel test” because Congress did not intend that islands such as Sand Island, formed after the admission of Oregon to the Union, should be considered in fixing the Oregon-Washington boundary.
The location and ownership of islands formed after 1859, read in connection with the boundary definition, present questions which apparently have not previously been presented to any court. Neither the “plain language” of the Admission Act, nor the legislative history thereof, gives one much guidance in resolving this issue. But in our opinion the relative neutrality of the language chosen and the paucity of legislative history on or near the point are factors which indicate that no dramatic deviation from the common law was intended.
Islands in rivers are generally formed in two ways:
“by accretions produced by the deposit at a particular place of the soil and sand constantly floating in it, and by the river cutting a new channel through the mainland on one or the other of its shores.” Missouri v. Kentucky, 11 Wall. (78 U.S.) 395, 407, 20 L.Ed. 116 (1870).
If the island is formed in the second way, by avulsion, the common law is well settled that, if the boundary between two states (or private property owners) is the river, the boundary remains the old channel and the island would belong to the owner of the mainland to which it was previously attached. Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U.S. 359, 12 S.Ct. 396, 36 L.Ed. 186 (1892); Missouri v. Nebraska, 196 U.S. 23, 25 S.Ct. 155, 49 L.Ed. 372 (1904); Missouri v. Kentucky, supra.
If the island is formed by gradual deposits in midstream, it is equally well settled under the common law that the island belongs to the owner of the river bed in the place where the island arose. If the river is the boundary between two states the island would belong to the state on whose side of the middle of the main channel it was formed. St. Louis v. Rutz, 138 U.S. 226, 11 S.Ct. 337, 34 L.Ed. 941 (1891); Jones v. Soulard, 24 How. (65 U.S.) 41, 16 L.Ed. 604 (1860); 5A Thompson on Real Property § 2564 at 620 (1957 ed.).
Were after-formed islands to bring the widest channel test into play both of the above common law results would be altered. If a new island were formed by avulsion and the new channel were wider than the old one (as it generally would be) then, by application of the statutory boundary definition including the after-formed island, the new land would suddenly be part of the state which owned the opposite bank of the old channel.
Likewise, if a new island were formed by deposits .in the river bed (as Sand Island evidently was), the boundary would be the wider channel on either side of the island, irrespective of where, in relation to the middle of the main channel, the island was formed. Moreover, if the island continued to grow on both sides by accretion, the boundary could well shift back and forth as first one channel and then the other momentarily became the “widest channel”!
We perceive no good reason for concluding that Congress intended by the Oregon Admission Act to achieve results so far removed from what had theretofore been settled law. Consequently, we hold that islands such as Sand Island, formed subsequently to 1859, are not to be considered in determining the Oregon boundary prior to the 1958 compact. The boundary remains what it was in 1859, the varying center of the main channel subject to such modifications as have been made by compact, which, as against defendants, cannot be made retroactive as to their property interests.
While one could well infer from the evidence presented that the main channel has always been south of Sand Island, the trial court made no finding on this point. Because the case was apparently tried by the parties on the wrong theory we think the best resolution is for this court to order a new trial so that new evidence can be taken and new findings made.
Reversed and a new trial ordered.
. When Washington was admitted to the Union in 1889 the same language (with one minor modification not relevant here) was used to define its boundary along the Columbia River, 25 Stat. 676. In any event the language of the Washington Admission Act cannot affect Oregon’s rights for
“[t]he northern boundary of the state of Oregon was established prior to that of the state of Washington, and it is not within the power of the national government to change that boundary without the consent of Oregon.” Washington v. Oregon, 211 U.S. 127, 130-131, 29 S.Ct. 47, 53 L.Ecl. 118 (1908).
. Though the Act speaks of the “middle channel” the Supreme Court held in Washington v. Oregon, 214 U.S. 205, 216, 29 S.Ct. 631, 53 L.ED. 969 (1909) that the language should properly be construed as “the middle of the main channel.”

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

Choices:

Answer: 99