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:
Robert J. STEINPREIS and Loraine Ison Steinpreis, Appellants, v. Kathryn J. Lawler SHOOK, F. Fendall Coughlin, Dorothy J. Beaver, Frank E. Hagan, Jr., Ralph W. Offutt and H. Ralph Miller, Appellees.
No. 10899.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued March 8, 1967.
Decided April 7, 1967.
Robert J. Steinpreis (Loraine Ison Steinpreis on the brief), appellant, pro se.
Thomas P. Perkins, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Maryland, and Charles G. Dalrymple, Asst. County Atty., Montgomery County, Maryland (Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., of Maryland, and Robert G. Tobin, Jr., Asst. County Atty., Montgomery County, Maryland, on the brief), for appellees.
Before SOBELOFF, BOREMAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges.
Judge Bell participated in the hearing and concurred in the disposition of the case but died before the opinion was prepared.
PER CURIAM:
A controversy arising between a landlord and his tenant has burgeoned into the present massive suit by the unsuccessful tenant, who claims $1,000,000.-00 damages, not only against the landlord but also against the judges of the People’s Court, a judge of the reviewing court, the court clerks, and the county sheriff. No purpose would be served by an elaborate recital of the antecedent litigation. The present appeal is from an order of the District Court of the District of Maryland granting the officials’ motion to dismiss the complaint against them.
The complaint diffuses its charges over 48 pages andi 141 paragraphs, but may be briefly summarized. It alleges a conspiracy between Harry M. Leet, the landlord and principal defendant, and Kathryn J. Lawler Shook, Judge of the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Frank E. Hagan, Jr., and Dorothy J. Beaver, Clerks of the People’s Court of Montgomery County and of the Silver Spring People’s Court respectively, and Ralph W. Offutt, Sheriff of Montgomery County, to wrongfully, fraudulently, and maliciously obtain judgments against the plaintiffs, and to evict them from the farm which they leased from Leet. Leet answered the complaint, and the remaining defendants — judges and court officers — moved to dismiss.
We have carefully considered the record, the briefs and oral arguments of the parties, including plaintiffs’ extensive reply brief and addendum. Plaintiffs have failed to allege any facts indicating that the defendant judges and other court officers acted in concert with each other or with Leet.
Moreover, with respect to the defendant judges, no facts are disclosed which would remove this case from the well-established rule that judges are absolutely immune from civil liability for any actions performed by them in their judicial capacity. Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. 335, 20 L.Ed. 646 (1872); Eliason v. Funk, 233 Md. 351, 196 A.2d 887 (1964); Prosser, Torts, § 109 at 780 (2d ed. 1955). The courts of Maryland have consistently held that the “appropriate and only” remedy for an allegedly erroneous judgment by a justice of the peace is by appeal from that judgment. Roth v. Shupp, 94 Md. 55, 50 A. 430 (1901).
The court clerks, in issuing the writs of summons which brought the plaintiffs into court for the distraint of rent cases, acted in the performance of their duties under rules of the court which have the effect of law, and the same actions complained of here were authoritively declared valid in Steinpreis v. Leet, 240 Md. 212, 213 A.2d 555 (1965) and Steinpreis v. Miller, 241 Md. 79, 215 A.2d 737 (1966). Likewise the county sheriff, in levying distraints, serving summonses, and conducting a sheriff’s sale, was merely carrying out the routine functions of his office. These duties are mandatory. Md. Code Ann. Art. 87, §§ 5 & 11 (1964 Replacement Volume). All of the papers which the sheriff processed were on standard forms and under oath. There is no allegation that the sheriff made any improper or false return on any of the papers.
Finding no valid reason for disturbing the District Court’s order, it is
Affirmed.
. Suits were filed for successive installments of rent as they became due. There were seven suits altogether, resulting in judgments for the landlord for the amount of the rents; one such judgment was appealed to the Court of Appeals of Maryland and was there affirmed. Steinpreis v. Leet, 240 Md. 212, 213 A.2d 555 (1965). See also Steinpreis v. Miller, 241 Md. 79, 215 A.2d 737 (1966). A judgment was also obtained by the landlord ordering the tenants to vacate the leased farm. The particular cause of action sought to be enforced in the federal courts was not appealed to the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the tenants having chosen to treat the decisions of the Circuit Court of Montgomery County as a “total nullity.”
. Plaintiffs’ numerous citations are not helpful, for while they express general propositions beyond dispute, the factual situations are distinguishable.

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