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:
PRICE v. JOHNSTON.
No. 11334.
Circuit.
May 5, 1947.
Writ of Certiorari Granted June 23, 1947.
See 67 S.Ct. 1757.
DENMAN and STEPHENS, Circuit Judges, dissenting.
Homer C. Price, of Alcatraz, Cal., in pro per., for appellant.
Frank J. Hennessy, U. S. Atty., and Joseph Karesh, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of San Francisco, Cal., for appellee.
Before GARRECHT, DENMAN, MATHEWS, STEPHENS, HEALY, BONE, and ORR, Circuit Judges.
HEALY, Circuit Judge.
This appeal challenges the discretionary power of the court to deny a habeas corpus petition because of an abusive use of the privilege of the writ through the filing of successive petitions presenting seriatim grounds at all times within the knowledge of the applicant. Panels of this court have repeatedly affirmed the existence of such authority, but in view of the importance of the question and the possible bearing upon it of recent Supreme Court decisions the appeal has been set down for hearing before the full bench.
Appellant is serving a sentence of 65 years on a general verdict of guilty under an indictment charging violations of 12 U.S.C.A. §§ 588b(a) and (b) and 588c, relating to bank robbery and assault and kidnapping incidental thereto. The present is his fourth petition for the writ, all of them having been presented to the United States district court for the northern district of California. On appeal from the first refusal to discharge we affirmed the judgment, Price v. Johnston, 125 F.2d 806, cer-tiorari denied 316 U.S. 677, 62 S.Ct. 1106, 86 L.Ed. 1750 and a like result was reached on appeal in the second proceeding, Price v. Johnston, 9 Cir., 144 F.2d 260. No appeal was taken from the denial of the third petition.
The instant petition, as originally filed, raised questions concerning the validity of the sentence and the giving of an instruction commenting on evidence of the commission of a collateral offense. Substantially the same questions, among others, had been raised in the district court in the proceeding on the second application. Accordingly, if this were all, the judgment of dismissal would appropriately be subject to affirmance on the basis of the court’s refusal to discharge in the second proceeding. Ex Parte Hawk, 321 U. S. 114, 118, 64 S.Ct. 448, 88 L.Ed. 572; Salinger v. Loisel, 265 U.S. 224, 230-232, 44 S.Ct. 519, 68 L.Ed. 989 However, by way of amendment to his petition the appellant interposed a wholly new ground for discharge, namely, “that the government knowingly employed false testimony on the trial, to obtain conviction.” The specific circumstances of this claim are not further developed in the petition or in the traverse to the warden’s return, but in his brief here the appellant has enlarged upon the point by stating that the United States attorney, in the course of the trial, “did take the one and only witness, Donner, that testified that there had been a crime committed, from the witness stand after he had testified that he could not see any guns or pistols during the robbery, to the district attorney’s office, and talked about the evidence and put the witness Donner back on the witness stand to testify that he did see the pistols, and described them, when he could not do so at first.” Since the general allegation may be supported by specific proof we treat this statement as though it had been incorporated in the petition, Hawk v. Olson, 326 U.S. 271, 273, 66 S.Ct. 116. So construing the petition, it remains to determine whether the court erred in refusing to inquire into the claim of the knowing employment of false testimony. Cf. Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 112, 55 S.Ct. 340, 79 L.Ed. 791, 98 A.L.R. 406. The court’s refusal to inquire was concededly predicated on our holding in Swihart v. Johnston, supra [note 1], and cases therein cited.
The records in these several proceedings disclose that throughout his trial appellant was represented by counsel of his own choosing. And since he was himself present at all times he could hardly have been unaware of the described incident or of its implications,' nor does he make any such claim. On the face of his showing it is apparent he knew as much about the misconduct at the time it is said to have occurred as he knows now. Yet no reason or excuse is attempted to be advanced for his failure to set it up in one or the other of his prior petitions.
The decision in Swihart v. Johnston, holding that such reservation of grounds amounts to an abusive use of the writ, announced no novel doctrine. That case and those which came after it proceeded upon the authority of Salinger v. Loisel, supra, and Wong Doo v. United States, 265 U.S. 239, 44 S.Ct. 524, 525, 68 L.Ed. 999. In these latter decisions, handed down simultaneously, the Court elaborately considered certain principles applicable to habeas corpus. The Wong Doo case, involving a petition by a Chinese in custody under a deportation order, is closely analogous to the present. The applicant had presented an earlier petition in which the validity of the order was assailed on two grounds, one of which was that the hearing on which the deportation order rested was not adequate or fair but essentially arbitrary. In the hearing the petitioner had offered no proof in support of this ground, and the district court did not rule upon it, holding merely that the other ground asserted was not good. In his second petition the applicant relied entirely on the ground earlier asserted but not pressed, namely, that the hearing had been unfair. The district court held that the doctrine of res judicata applied and remanded the petitioner, the circuit court of appeals affirming. The Supreme Court held the doctrine inapplicable but nevertheless affirmed the judgment, saying that the situation was plainly one where “according to a sound judicial discretion, controlling weight must have been given to the prior refusal.” It observed that the petitioner had full opportunity to offer proof of the ground in the hearing on his first petition and that good faith required that he produce the proof then. Said the Court: “To reserve the proof for use in attempting to support a later petition, if the first failed, was to make an abusive use of the writ of habeas corpus. No reason for not presenting the proof at the outset is offered. It has not been embodied in the record, but what is said of it there and in the briefs shows that it was accessible all the time.”
In none of the more recent decisions of the Supreme Court are the principles announced in Salinger v. Loisel or Wong Doo v. United States, supra, overruled or modified. Waley v. Johnston, 316 U.S. 101, 62 S.Ct. 964, 86 L.Ed. 1302, and Hawk v. Olson, 326 U.S. 271, 66 S.Ct. 116, reaffirm the rule there stated that the doctrine of res judicata is not applicable in habeas corpus cases, but neither decision casts doubt upon the power of the court, in the exercise of a sound discretion, to decline to consider repeated petitions where it appears that the privilege of the writ is being abused. Practical considerations as well as reason and justice support the ex-ereise of such power. In an earlier opinion in the present proceeding, Price v. Johnston, 9 Cir., 159 F.2d 234, we noted the tendency of prison inmates in this circuit to multiply petitions, with the result that unnecessary and increasingly heavy burdens are thrown on the courts in districts where federal penitentiaries are located; and in Dorsey v. Gill, App.D.C., 148 F.2d 857, the court of appeals of the District of Columbia has amassed figures evidencing the occurrence of a like phenomenon in its jurisdiction. Our opinion last above cited comments on the dubious nature of the objectives that seem in many instances to inspire these recurring applications for the writ.
The command of the statute, 28 U.S.C.A. § 461, is that the courts and judges make such disposition of habeas corpus petitions “as law and justice require.” A petitioner is entitled to an opportunity to prove his claim of unlawful imprisonment, Hawk v. Olson, supra, 326 U.S. 271 page 279, 66 S.Ct. 116, but good faith requires that he make fair use of the opportunity afforded. Where there have been repeated petitions with an apparent husbanding of grounds the onus may properly be cast on the applicant of satisfying the court that an abusive use is not being made of the writ. Conversely, no matter if there have been a multiplicity of petitions, grounds newly asserted and seemingly valid must be inquired into if circumstances appear or are fairly ■ shown to excuse the prior failure to assert them. It should be unnecessary to add that even in the absence of such a showing the court may issue the writ and proceed to inquire if in a particular case it is thought that the ends of justice dictate that course. We are not here concerned with a compulsive principle analogous to res judicata, nor with some empty formula to be applied without reflection or as a matter of course. We are speaking rather of a discretionary power resting in the conscience of the judge, to be exercised in light of the circumstances of the particular .case and on grounds which square with reason and justice
In this instance there was no abuse of discretion in the dismissal of the petition.
Judgment affirmed.
Swihart v. Johnston, 9 Cir., 150 F.2d 721; Garrison v. Johnston, 9 Cir., 151 F.2d 1011; Wilson v. Johnston, 9 Cir., 154 F.2d 111, cert. den. 328 U.S. 872 66 S.Ct. 1366, 90 L.Ed. 1642.
The first petition was filed in June, 1940, the second in September, 1942, and the third in August, 1945.
These points appear not to have been pressed on the appeal in that proceeding, and they are patently without merit.
In Salinger v. Loisel, after noting that the common law doctrine of res judicata does not extend to a decision on habeas corpus refusing to discharge a prisoner, the Court said that a prior refusal is not without bearing or weight when a later application is being considered. “In early times,” said the Court, “when a refusal to discharge was not open to appellate review, courts and judges were accustomed to exercise an independent judgment on each successive application, regardless of the number. But when a right to an appellate review was given, the reason for that practice ceased, and the practice came to be materially changed * * 265 U.S. pp. 230-231, 44 S.Ct. 521. In the Salinger case there had been a prior refusal to discharge by a court of coordinate jurisdiction and an afiirmance of the judgment by the circuit court of appeals. The Supreme Court remarked that had the district court disposed of the immediate application on that ground “its discretion would have been well exercised, and we should sustain its action, without saying more.” 265 U.S. p. 232, 44 S.Ct. 522.
The court below issued an order to show cause upon the filing of the petition, and after the warden bad made bis return setting up the earlier proceedings, the petitioner filed a traverse.' The court thereupon, without having issued the writ, discharged the show cause order and dismissed Repetition.

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