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.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

Opinion:
UNITED STATES of America v. Moses E. PORTER, Appellant.
No. 23386.
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued May 21, 1970.
Decided June 4, 1970.
Mr. Belford V. Lawson, Jr., Washington, D. C„ for appellant.
Mr. Julius A. Johnson, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. Thomas A. Flannery, U. S. Atty., John A. Terry, and Charles R. Work, Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.
Before McGOWAN and MacKINNON, Circuit Judges, and DAVIES, United States District Judge for the District of North Dakota.
Sitting by designation pursuant to Title 28, U.S.Code Section 292(e).
PER CURIAM:
Indicted for second degree murder, appellant was convicted by a jury of manslaughter. Upon this appeal, he raises a number of points which we have examined and found unavailing. Three are objections to the judge’s charge, with which charge appellant’s trial counsel expressly professed his satisfaction. We find, in any event, no plain error requiring reversal. *Rule 52(b), Fed.R.Crim.P. A further challenge to the indictment in this court is concluded by our decision in Gaither and Tatum v. United States, 134 U.S.App.D.C. 154, 413 F.2d 1061 (1969).
Appellant also argues that reversal is compelled because of the trial court’s failure to let defense counsel testify to pretrial conversations had by him with certain of the Government witnesses. We have very recently found an abuse of discretion in this regard, United States v. Vereen, 139 U.S.App.D.C. -, 429 F.2d 713 (decided May 13, 1970); and we think it appropriate to note why we do not regard that decision as controlling here.
In Vereen, trial counsel not only sought to withdraw but offered to arrange for substitute counsel who could continue the trial to its conclusion. Here, counsel presented no such possibility and could only contemplate the certain prospect of a mistrial. Neither was the proffered testimony here of the same critical significance to the defendant as it was in Vereen. In that ease, the Government’s only eyewitness gave two conflicting versions in his direct testimony. One directly confirmed defendant’s defense of duress. Defense counsel, who had interviewed in his office the Government’s complaining witness, felt it necessary in this state of the record to testify that this version was what the witness had told him; and the impact of that testimony on the jury could have been very great under the circumstances. Here, counsel sought only to impeach the testimony of some witnesses that an eyewitness of the shooting was in the house when it occurred. But the latter’s own testimony at the trial was not assailed directly, and the collateral impeaching matter claimed was of fragile weight. There was, in any event, another eyewitness to the shooting who testified without challenge. Under all the circumstances, we find no abuse of discretion; and, as in Vereen, we again remind the trial bar of the need, in the interest of efficient judicial administration, to have third parties present at their interviews of witnesses if what is said on those occasions is to be made the subject of testimony. See § 4.3 of the American Bar Association’s Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function and the Defense Function (Tentative Draft 1970).
Affirmed.
. The problem as to the court’s credibility instruction is created by the court's improvident inclusion in its charge of the statement that “You may use whatever yardstick ' or whatever measuring device you have found effective in the past in determining what credibility you shall assess to a witness’ testimony.” Compare Instruction Eleven of the Junior Bar Association’s Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia. We find no error because this statement was not objected to, and was coupled with the standard instructions on this score.

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?

Choices:
private business (including criminal enterprises)
private organization or association
federal government (including DC)
sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
government - level not ascertained
natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
miscellaneous
not ascertained

Answer: 2