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:
James M. SHEA, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
No. 74-2115.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Nov. 6, 1974.
Decided Nov. 26, 1974.
Richard E. Crouch (Philip J. Hirschkop, Alexandria, Va., on brief), for appellant.
Mark S. Geraghty, Arlington, Va., Sp. Asst. U. S. Atty. (David H. Hopkins, U. S. Atty., on brief), for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and WINTER and BUTZNER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
James Shea was convicted of willfully supplying his employer with false or fraudulent information about his income tax withholding, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7205 (1970). This court affirmed his conviction. Shea v. United States, No. 15,313 (4th Cir. April 6, 1971).
Shea’s conviction arose from his attempt to protest the Government’s policies in Viet Nam. On February 20, 1970 Shea filed a W-4 Form with his employer showing that he had 20 dependents, a substantial increase from his previous claim of six dependents. In response to his employer’s query about the change, Shea wrote: “I changed my number of dependents as indicated on the enclosed W-4 Form after considering carefully the Internal Revenue’s regulations, statutes covering income tax, and the advice of my lawyer. My explanation of the change is that the number of my dependents has increased.” Earlier, on January 23, 1970, when filing an income tax return, Shea had enclosed a letter protesting government policies. In that letter he proclaimed a general intent to seek ways to resist the payment of taxes. He did not, however, repeat his protest in a letter attached to the W-4 Form or refer to it in any way when asked for an explanation of the increase in the number of his dependents.
After the decision in United States v. Snider, 502 F.2d 645 (4th Cir. 1974), Shea filed a motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which the district court denied. Like Shea, Snider was convicted of violating § 7205 for making an inaccurate statement on his withholding form. Snider had filed a W-4 Form, claiming three billion dependents, which represented all the human beings in the world, as he explained in a cover letter. Reversing the conviction, this court held that the information was not “(1) supplied with an intent to deceive, or (2) false in the sense of deceptive — of such a nature that it would reasonably affect withholding to the detriment of the government.” 502 F.2d at 655. Since the claim of three billion dependents could deceive no one, this court found that dismissal of the indictment was appropriate.
Shea’s case is distinguishable from Snider’s. On its face, the claim of 20 dependents is not completely implausible. Unlike Snider, Shea enclosed no letter with his W-4 to explain his actions. The letter of January 23 does not bring this case within Snider’s holding since Shea did not sufficiently alert the Government that he planned to claim enough dependents to wipe out his tax liability. Accordingly, we do not find that dismissal of the indictment would be appropriate.
Shea siso claims that the district court applied an incorrect legal standard in his trial without a jury. The record on appeal, however, does not disclose an error warranting post-conviction relief. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to vacate the sentence.
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