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:
UNITED STATES of America, Libellant-Appellee, v. An ARTICLE OF DRUG Consisting of 572 Boxes More or Less, of an Article LABELED in part: (BOX) “FURESTROL VAGINAL SUPPOSITORIES * * *” the Norwich Pharmacal Company, Claimant-Appellant.
No. 26926
Summary Calendar.
United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.
July 25, 1969.
Rehearing Denied Sept. 3, 1969.
George M. Hopkins, Atlanta, Ga., Robert H. Becker, Norwich, N. Y., Kleinfeld & Kaplan, Washington, D. C., Newton, Hopkins & Ormsby, Atlanta, Ga., of counsel, for appellant.
Charles L. Goodson, U. S. Atty., Beverly B. Bates, Asst. U. S. Atty., Atlanta, Ga., Allen L. Chancey, Jr., Acting U. S. Atty., William W. Goodrich, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Joanne S. Sisk, Atty., Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare, Washington, D. C., for appellee, of counsel.
Before WISDOM, COLEMAN, and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
We have concluded on the merits that this case is of such character as not to justify oral argument. Accordingly, we have directed the clerk to place the case on the Summary Calendar and to notify the parties of this fact in writing. See Rule 18 of the Rules of this Court and Murphy v. Houma Well Service, 5 Cir. 1969, 409 F.2d 804, Part I.
The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires that drugs shipped in interstate commerce be tested by the Food and Drug Administration unless they are “generally recognized among experts * * * as safe and effective for use under the conditions prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling thereof”. This case turns upon the applicability of the quoted statutory language to “Furestrol Vaginal Suppositories”, a drug manufactured by Norwich Pharmacal Co. of Norwich, New York. Federal officers seized an interstate shipment of the drug at Atlanta in April 1965 under process issued by the district court. Norwich filed claim to the shipment as its owner. This condemnation proceeding followed.
I.
The sole issue, as the parties agreed below, was whether Furestrol fits the statutory definition of a new drug, that is, one that is “not generally recognized” by qualified experts as “safe and effective” for the designated use. The district court held that Furestrol was not .so recognized. We affirm that holding for the reasons set out in the district •court’s opinion, reported at 294 F.Supp. 1307.
II.
On appeal, Norwich raises several points with respect to the conduct of the trial.
A. The district court allowed each side to present only three expert witnesses. Two experts testified for the Government and three testified for the company. Norwich argues that the witness limitation, despite the apparent authorization in Fed.R.Civ.P. 16(4), prejudiced it in this case by allowing the Government, with only two witnesses, to make expert opinion appear evenly split. Both sides agree that the nature of expert opinion about Furestrol, and not its actual safety or effectiveness, is the ultimate fact issue. See AMP, Inc. v. Gardner, 2 Cir. 1968, 389 F.2d 825. Norwich asserts that absent the witness limitation, it might have been able to overwhelm the Government in numbers of expert witnesses. This argument ignores the fact that medical experts can, and in the present case did, testify not only to their own views about a drug, but to the state of reputable opinion-at-large within their field. See Research Laboratories, Inc. v. United States, 9 Cir. 1948, 167 F.2d 410, 416. Thus the limitation upon Norwich’s witness did not put the company in a bind, even though the Government had two witnesses on its side. Norwich still had the opportunity to elicit testimony about the consensus of medical views, an opportunity it exploited without success. The district court simply credited the Government’s witnesses rather than Norwich’s witnesses.
B. A second evidentiary ruling controverted by Norwich was the court’s refusal to admit into evidence an informal poll taken by Dr. Paul Kearns, a Norwich witness, which would tend to show the acceptance of Furestrol’s compound by experts in the field. The poll consists of letters and statements made to Dr. Kearns by doctors known to him as qualified. The court excluded this evidence as hearsay. Norwich argues that the statements were not offered to show the truth of what they state, i. e. that Fur-estrol is safe, but rather to show that the statements were made, which, says Norwich, is the fact at issue.
This Court has recently had occasion to repeat the definition of hearsay:
‘a statement made by an unavailable declarant and offered for the truth of the matter in the statement.” Brown v. United States, 5 Cir. 1968, 403 F.2d 489, 491, cited in Davis v. United States, 5 Cir. 1969, 411 F.2d 1126.
If, therefore, the making of the statement is itself the critical legal fact, and if the truth of its contents are not at issue, the statement should be admitted. An obvious example would be testimony as to the making of a treasonable or seditious statement. Here, however, the doctors’ statements were not offered merely to show that the doctors had made them, but rather to show that the doctors held the opinions that they said they did. The statute focuses upon holding an opinion, and the declarations proffered were meant to show that the doctors do hold that opinion. Norwich, in effect, presented the extrajudicial statement “I believe that Furestrol is safe” to show the truth of the statement, i. e. that the doctor speaking did hold the stated belief. The hearsay rule forbids such presentation, since the speaker is not in court to testify to his own opinion, and the district court properly excluded it.
C. Norwich further argues that the court erred in refusing to admit certain letters and memoranda written by employees of the FDA and unearthed by the company in pre-trial discovery. These documents evidenced the Government’s conflicting positions on Furestrol over a period of time. They did not, however, relate to the sole fact controverted at trial, whether experts “generally recognized” Furestrol as safe and effective. The court did not err in' excluding the documents as irrelevant.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
. 21 U.S.C. § 301 et seq.
. 21 U.S.C. § 321 (p) (1).

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