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:
MORGAN v. PATILLO.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
February 28, 1928.
No. 5141.
Contracts <§=>19 — Acceptance of offer cannot create binding contract, where withdrawn before communicated to accepting party by his agent.
Acceptance of offer cannot create binding contract, where offer was withdrawn before it was communicated to accepting party by his agent.
Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Florida; Rhydon M. Call, Lake Jones, and William I. Grubb, Judges.
1 Suit in equity by Frank A. Morgan against S. J. Patillo. Decree for defendant, and complainant appeals.
Affirmed.
See, also, 1 F.(2d) 326.
Wm. M. Toomer, W. T. Stockton, Herman Ulmer, and Charles H. Murchison, all of Jacksonville, Fla. (Stockton, Ulmer & Murchison, of Jacksonville, Fla., on the brief), for appellant.
Grover Middlebrooks and Shepard Bryan, both of Atlanta, Ga., and George C. Bedell, of Jacksonville, Fla. (Chester Bedell, of Jacksonville, Fla., on the brief), for appellee.
Before WALKER, BRYAN, and FOSTER, Circuit Judges.
WALKER, Circuit Judge.
When this ease was here before, a decree sustaining a motion of the appellee to dismiss the bill was reversed. Morgan v. Patillo (C. C. A.) 297 F. 140. After the remandment of the case appellee’s answer to the bill put in issue its allegations as to the making of a contract by the parties.
We are of opinion that the evidence adduced was not such as to require the conclusion that those allegations were sustained. The evidence was consistent with findings that on. May 1, 1922, the appellee for the first time agreed in an interview with George Rentz, .who was acting as appellee’s agent to negotiate a sale of timber on certain lands in Madison county, Florida, to sell that timber at a stated price per 1,000 feet, and then signed a memorandum in the form of a letter addressed to Rentz, setting out the terms of sale of such timber to appellant, that appellee was induced to consent to the contract evidenced by that memorandum by a material false representation made by Rentz, who was a paid employe of parties interested in the purchase of the timber, and that before that memorandum, or the terms of sale embodied therein, were communicated to appellant, or accepted by him, appellee withdrew his consent to carry out the contract to be evidenced by that instrument.
That memorandum could not bind appellee as a contract prior to its terms being communicated to appellant, and there could have been no effectual express or implied acceptance by appellant of the proposal embodied in that memorandum after the appellee’s withdrawal of that proposal before the terms of it were communicated to appellant. Davis v. Wells, 104 U. S. 159, 26 L. Ed. 686; Williston on Contracts, §§ 70, 71. The decree dismissing the bill is sustainable on the ground that the court was justified in concluding from the evidence that the instrument relied on as the basis of the • relief sought did not become a contract enforceable against the appellee.
That decree is 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: 1