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:
CITIZENS & SOUTHERN NATIONAL BANK, Appellee, v. Bill L. BRUCE and Donald R. Ham, d/b/a Bruce Properties Company, Appellants.
No. 76-2114.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted Sept. 1, 1977.
Decided Sept. 30, 1977.
Chester A. Love and Thomas K. Edelmann of Love, Lacks & McMahon, Clayton, Mo., filed brief for appellants.
Richard C. Freeman, III, Atlanta, Ga., filed brief for appellee.
Before BRIGHT, ROSS, and HENLEY, Circuit Judges.
BRIGHT, Circuit Judge.
Citizens & Southern National Bank (Bank), as assignee of accounts receivable owed by Bill L. Bruce and Donald R. Ham, a partnership doing business as Bruce Properties Company (Bruce), recovered a judgment in district court for the sum of $13,-555, plus interest. Contending the district court erred in matters of fact and law, Bruce brings this appeal. We affirm.
This controversy originated in two agreements executed in 1973 between Bruce and Contract Specialists, Inc., a Georgia corporation. Under the terms of those agreements, Contract Specialists agreed to obtain tenants for apartments owned by Bruce in St. Louis, Missouri, and Bruce agreed to pay Contract Specialists, on a monthly basis, a fee for each apartment rented during the prior month. Bruce soon fell behind in its payments. To obtain needed cash, Contract Specialists entered into a factoring arrangement with the Bank, assigning to the Bank its receivables from Bruce, as they arose on each monthly invoice, in exchange for cash, less a three percent discount on the amount of each invoice. On May 28,1974, the Bank directly notified Bruce of the amount still due and owing on the assigned invoices. When Bruce failed to pay, the Bank brought the present action to recover the balance due. As of the time of trial, the Bank’s claim had been adjusted to $13,555, plus interest as of May 31, 1974.
Bruce raised the following defenses at trial and on appeal:
1) That the services performed by Contract Specialists generated a single claim precluding any partial assignment to the Bank without Bruce’s consent.
2) That the Bank’s claim should be reduced by $9,007.50 for payments made to Contract Specialists before Bruce received notice of the assignments.
The district court properly rejected the first contention:
The contract specified that payments were to be made monthly. Defendant received monthly bills for the services performed. Under these circumstances, the Court concludes that the claims were separate and that the assignment without defendant’s consent was proper. Cf., Joseph T. Ryerson & Son v. Stark-Inland Mach. Works, 270 S.W. 715 (Mo.App. 1925); Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Maryland v. Brown, 228 Mo.App. 164, 65 S.W.2d 1064 (1933). [420 F.Supp. at 798.]
Missouri case law and the evidence presented at trial support the court’s determination. Under Missouri law, when an agreement calls for periodic billings and payments, each nonpayment creates a separate cause of action. Joseph T. Ryerson & Son v. Stark-Inland Mach. Works, 270 S.W. 715 (Mo.App.1925); Finnerty v. Hoppe, 150 Mo.App. 515, 131 S.W. 128 (1910). Each billing by Contract Specialists therefore created a separate claim that could be assigned without Bruce’s consent.
We turn to the second issue. The district court held, and we agree, that Bruce is not liable to the Bank for amounts paid to Contract Specialists on the assigned accounts prior to May 28, 1974, when it received notice of the assignment. Price v. Clevenger, 99 Mo.App. 536, 74 S.W. 894, 896 (1903); see Boyd v. Sloan, 335 Mo. 163, 71 S.W.2d 1065 (1934). The Bank does not dispute the fact that Bruce made payments totalling $9,007.50 to Contract Specialists prior to the notice date, but it denies that such payments applied to the invoices here in question.
Contract Specialists held accounts receivable from Bruce arising from business unrelated to the contracts at issue here and the disputed payments could have been made on those unrelated accounts. Testimony by officers of Contract Specialists indicated that the invoices in question remained unpaid on its books and that all payments received from Bruce on assigned accounts had been transmitted to the Bank. Contrary testimony presented by appellant Bruce appeared equivocal to the district court. Judge Nangle in his opinion noted:
The Court must conclude that defendant has failed to establish payments to the assignor, Contract Specialists. The Court found that the $9,007.50 worth of checks did not indicate what they were intended to pay, and that the witnesses were unable to clarify the issue. The Court further found that defendant did business with Contract Specialists, for which payments would be made, which was unrelated to the business involved herein. Under these circumstances, the Court is unable to conclude that the $9,007.50 was payment for moneys owing under the invoices which are the subject of this suit. [420 F.Supp. at 799.]
The district court findings on this issue are well supported by the evidence and its conclusions of law properly follow from those findings.
Finding no error of fact or law in these proceedings, we affirm.
. In a bench trial, the Honorable John M. Nangle, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, made factual findings and conclusions of law adverse to Bruce. The opinion is reported at 420 F.Supp. 795 (E.D.Mo. 1976).
. The district court concluded, and the parties agree, that Missouri law governs this diversity case.

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: 2