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:
SHOEMAKER v. BURKE, Postmaster, et al.
No. 6895.
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Decided June 1, 1937.
Frederick A. Ballard, of Washington, D. G, for appellant.
Leslie C. Garnett and Howard Boyd, both of Washington, D. C., for appellees.
Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB, VAN ORSDEL, GRONER, and STEPHENS, Associate Justices.
MARTIN, Chief Justice.
This is an appeal from a decree of the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia, dismissing the appellant’s bill of complaint upon a motion alleging lack of substance.
The appellant was plaintiff below and filed a bill of complaint against the appellees Vincent C. Burke, as Postmaster of Washington, D. G, and James A. Farley, as Postmaster General of the United States, praying for an injunction to restrain the defendants from enforcing an order withdrawing from the mails,a letter tendered by the appellant for mailing, on the envelope of which was affixed a sticker bearing the words, “I don’t read Hearst,” these words being encircled by a curved line.
The appellant undertook to mail this letter and similar letters but was denied mailing privileges by force of the Postmaster General’s determination that the letters were subject to the prohibition of the Act approved June 18, 1888, § 2, as amended, title 18 U.S.C.A. § 335, which provides as follows: “All matter otherwise mailable by law, upon the envelope or outside cover or wrapper of which, or any postal card upon which, any delineations, epithets, terms, or language of an indecent, lewd, lascivious, obscene, libelous, scurrilous, defamatory, or threatening character, or calculated by the terms or manner or style of display and obviously intended to reflect injuriously upon the character or conduct of another, may be written or printed or otherwise impressed or apparent, are hereby declared nonmailable matter, and shall not be conveyed in the mails nor delivered from any post office nor by any letter carrier, and shall be withdrawn from the mails under such regulations as the Postmaster General shall prescribe. . Whoever shall knowingly deposit or cause to be deposited, for mailing or delivery, anything declared by this section to be nonmailable matter, or shall knowingly take the same or cause the same to be taken from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing of or aiding in the circulation or disposition of the same, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
This statute first prohibits the mailing of any matter otherwise mailable by law if upon the envelopes there is written or printed any delineations, epithets, terms, or language .of an indecent, lewd, lascivious, obscene, libelous, scurrilous, defamatory, or threatening character. It is not contended that the inscription in question is subject to condemnation under any of these provisions. The statute further prohibits the mailing of any matter otherwise mailable if upon the envelopes thereof there is written or printed any matter calculated by the terms or manner or style of display and obviously intended to reflect injuriously upon the character or conduct of another.
The Postmaster General held that the inscription upon the sticker, to wit, “I don’t read Hearst” fell within the provisions of the latter subdivision, for the reason that it was calculated by the terms and obviously intended to reflect injuriously upon the character or conduct of another.
We are of the opinion that the decree of the lower court dismissing the appellant’s bill of complaint should be sustained.
In the first place we may' say that in our opinion the inscription on the sticker which was attached to the envelope in question was “calculated by the terms or manner or style of display and obviously intended to reflect injuriously upon the character or conduct of another.” It is clear that this inscription bore no relation to the information required by the Postmaster when receiving and sending the mail to the addressee. It was a purely gratuitous intrusion of an expression of opinion by the writer denunciatory in its nature of Hearst and the Hearst publications. It was an effort to induce others to join in the same opinion and to agree with the writer in condemning the character and conduct of Hearst. Accordingly, it was obviously intended to reflect injuriously upon the character and conduct of another, and it is plain that it could have no other purpose or effect.
The appellant cites the case of American Civil Liberties Union v. Kiely (C.C.A.) 40 F.(2d) 451, 453, wherein it was held that matter otherwise defamatory when used with reference to a state does not come within the purview of the present statute, but that the statute applies only to reflections upon individual persons and not to reflections upon a state. The court said: “In our opinion, the, act relates to persons and not to systems of administration or other abstractions.”
This reference does not seem to apply to the present case. The implied denunciation herein does not relate to a state or an abstraction, but to a well-known publisher and by innuendo to his publication.
Moreover, it should be observed that the authority to pass upon such a subject is in the first instance intrusted by statute to the Postmaster General, and that his decision thereon is conclusive unless he has exceeded his authority or the court should be of the opinion that his action was clearly wrong.
In Bates & Guild Co. v. Payne, 194 U.S. 106, 24 S.Ct. 595, 597, 48 L.Ed. 894, in a suit brought to compel the Postmaster General to transmit through the mails, as second-class matter, a publication alleged to be a periodical, the bill was discharged with the following statements:
“ * * * where Congress has committed to the head of a department certain duties requiring the exercise of judgment and discretion, his action thereon, whether it involve questions of law or fact, will not be reviewed by the courts unless he has exceeded his authority or this court should be of opinion that his action was clearly wrong. * * *
“The rule upon this subject may be summarized as follows: That where the decision of questions of fact is committed by Congress to the judgment and discretion of the head of a department, his decision thereon is conclusive; and that even upon mixed questions of law and fact, or of law alone, his action will carry with it a strong presumption of its correctness, and the courts will not ordinarily review it, although they may have the power, and will occasionally exercise the right of so doing. * * * ,
“ * * * While, as already observed, the question is one of doubt, we think the decision, of the Postmaster General, who is vested by Congress with the power to exercise his judgment and discretion in the matter, should be accepted as final.”
See, also, Smith v. Hitchcock, 226 U.S. 53, 33 S.Ct. 6, 57 L.Ed. 119; Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten (C.C.A.) 246 F. 24, L.R.A.1918C, 79 Ann.Cas.l918B, 999.
The decree of the lower court is affirmed.
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