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 "private business and its executives". 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:
LAWRENCE v. COMMODORE NAVIGATION CORPORATION.
No. 124.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Jan. 2, 1940.
Abraham M. Fisch, of New York City, pro se. and for plaintiff.
Lynch & Hagen, of New York City, (Anthony V. Lynch, Jr., and John S. Bull, both of New York City, of counsel), for appellee Commodore Navigation Corp.
Before L. HAND, CHASE, and PATTERSON,- Circuit Judges.
CHASE, Circuit Judge.
Abraham M. Fisch, an attorney-at-law, brought a suit in the District Court for the Southern District of New York as attorney for Larry Lawrence, the plaintiff, against Commodore Navigation Corporation to recover the damages sustained by Lawrence when he was severely burned by an explosion while acting as engineer on the defendant’s motor vessel “Helen”. The suit was later settled by Lawrence without his attorney’s knowledge for the sum of $5000 paid to him by the defendant’s insurer. Thereupon the appellant filed a petition to have his attorney’s lien determined pursuant to Sec. 475 of the New York Judiciary Law, Consol.Laws, c. 30. There was a reference to a special master who took evidence and filed his report recommending a denial of the petition. The petitioner moved to reopen for the purpose of introducing further evidence. The court confirmed the report of the special master and orders were entered denying both the petition and the motion and the settlement of the action was noted. This appeal followed.
The special master found that Lawrence did not retain the petitioner to act as his attorney. A printed form of retainer was introduced which the petitioner’s evidence tended to show was signed by Lawrence by his mark in the presence of one Schiffman, an attorney employed by petitioner. If this was executed by Lawrence it did show that he retained the petitioner to act as his attorney in the matter and agreed to pay him fifty per centum of whatever he should recover with or without suit. The defendant’s evidence tended to show that Lawrence not only did not make his mark as claimed but that he was then physically unable to do so because of his injuries. Whether he did or not is wholly a question of fact and the evidence, though conflicting sharply, so well supports the finding made by the special master and confirmed by the court below that we find no reason for disturbing it.
But without so deciding, if we should assume for the purpose of this appeal that the contrary is true and that Lawrence did execute the retainer as claimed, the result of this appeal would not be more favorable to the petitioner because the special master also found on the testimony of Schiffman that, acting for the petitioner, he agreed, if there were no recovery, not only to charge Lawrence nothing for services but also to make no charge to him for disbursements as well. It is true that later Schiffman changed his testimony in this respect but his stated reason for so doing was so weak that the special master did not believe him and there was no good reason why he should have treated his later testimony as more than a feeble attempt to undo a most damaging admission he had previously made and which did reveal the truth.
This finding, amply supported, shows that the retainer relied on by tbe petitioner, if actually signed by Lawrence by means of his mark, was champertous and void. In re Gilman’s Administratrix, 251 N.Y. 265, 167 N.E. 437. The additional evidence the petitioner sought to introduce related only to whether or not the mark on the retainer was made by Lawrence and, as the retainer, on which the petitioner solely relies, was void in any event, the denial of the motion to reopen the proceedings was without error.
Both orders are affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0