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:
FARMLAND INDUSTRIES, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SEABOARD COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 83-3685
Non-Argument Calendar.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
June 8, 1984.
Stanley H. Eleff, Tampa, Fla., for plaintiff-appellant.
Nathan D. Goldman, Tampa, Fla., for defendant-appellee.
Before HILL, JOHNSON and HENDERSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
In November, 1977, Farmland Industries, Inc. (Farmland) shipped eight rail cars of Diammonium Phosphate and Phosphoric Acid on the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company (Seaboard); the train derailed and the shipments were destroyed. Farmland did not submit a claim to Seaboard for the damage until February, 1979. Farmland subsequently filed this case in the district court to recover the value of six of the carloads. (Seaboard inexplicably paid for the loss of two carloads but declined to pay for the remaining six carloads which are at issue in this case.) The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Seaboard, holding that Farmland could not prevail because it failed to submit its claim for damage to Seaboard within the nine month period set forth in Seaboard’s standardized bill of lading. Farmland appealed to this court; we affirm.
Congress, by statute, has mandated that a railroad carrier must provide a period of at least nine months for the filing of claims. 49 U.S.C. § 11707(e). Following the lead of the statute, virtually all carriers have adopted uniform bills of lading that require claims to be filed within the statutory minimum time of nine months. Farmland admits that it did not submit a claim in conformity with the requirements of the bill of lading within the nine month period. Farmland nevertheless argues that its failure to file a claim should be excused under the “actual knowledge” exception developed by the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. See Hopper Paper Company v. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 178 F.2d 179 (7th Cir.1949), cert. denied, 339 U.S. 943, 70 S.Ct. 797, 94 L.Ed. 1359 (1950). In Hopper, the plaintiff’s entire shipment was destroyed, and the defendant advised the plaintiff of the loss. The plaintiff then informed the defendant of the exact value of the shipment, but the plaintiff transmitted the information in a nonconforming notice. The court excused the plaintiff’s failure to comply with the notice provisions, holding that the defendant had received “actual knowledge of all the conditions as to the damages that a written notice could give.” 178 F.2d at 181.
The district court noted that the Hopper rule has not been adopted by either this circuit or the former Fifth Circuit, see East Texas Motor Freight Lines v. United States, 239 F.2d 417, 420 (5th Cir.1956) (distinguishing Hopper); however, the district court declined to decide whether this circuit would adopt the Hopper rule because it found the facts in this case distinguishable from those in Hopper. The district court stated:
The carrier in Hopper not only knew that the shipper's entire cargo was destroyed but also knew, pursuant to a nonconforming notice, the exact value of that loss. One of the principal functions of the notice requirement in the bill of lading is to allow the carrier to exactly compute its losses. Unlike Hopper, the defendant in the instant case did not receive notice of the specific amount of the plaintiff’s damage claim. Thus, while the Hopper Court could correctly describe the submission of a conforming notice as a “useless act,” under the facts in the present case, such a description is not accurate.
Memorandum Opinion at 3. Thus, the district court held that Farmland’s failure properly to give notice precluded, it from recovery even under the Hopper rule.
We hold that the district court properly distinguished Hopper from the present case and entered summary judgment for Seaboard. We somewhat doubt that this circuit would adopt the Hopper holding, which has not been widely followed. See Wisconsin Packing Co. v. Indiana Refrigerator Lines, 618 F.2d 441, 452 & n. 1 (7th Cir.1980) (en banc) (Sprecher, J., dissenting) (“every citation of Hopper by other courts either criticizes it or holds it narrowly to its facts”). We need not decide whether to adopt the Hopper rule in resolving this case, however, because this case is distinguishable from Hopper, falling within the general rule that the plaintiff must properly give notice. See East Texas Motor Freight Lines, 239 F.2d at 418-21.
The judgment of the district court is
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: 1