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 respondents in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
McCARTHY et al. v. SAFEWAY STORES, Inc.
No. 21, Docket 20239.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Oct. 24, 1946.
Abraham M. Fisch, of New York City, for appellants.
Harold Schaffner and Reginald V. Spell, both of New York City, for appellee.
Before L. HAND, SWAN, and FRANK, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
The plaintiffs appeal from a judgment dismissing their complaint, entered upon the verdict of a jury, in an action to recover damages for the defendant’s negligent driving of one of its trucks. The only point presented is that the testimony so clearly established the defendant’s negligence that the judge should have taken the issue from the jury. However, at the close of the evidence the plaintiffs did not ask the .judge to do this, and to leave them only the amount of the damages: and it necessarily follows that he did not commit any error in not doing so. Not only was he not bound so to limit the issues; but it would have been an error if he had, for he would have deprived the plaintiffs of that right to a verdict which they had demanded in their complaint under Federal Rules of Civil. Procedure, rule 38(b), 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, and which, had they succeeded, would have put them in a much stronger position on an appeal. This leaves nothing for us to review; nor does the order which denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a new trial. Flint v. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 2 Cir., 143 F.2d 923.
The plaintiffs urge that there are cases where the verdict is so shockingly unjust that an appellate court will intervene ex mero motu, even though the defeated party has not asked that the issue should be taken from the jury; and, arguendo, we will assume that we have such a power .in extreme cases. Even so, there would be not the slightest justification for intervening here; for the case involved a straight conflict of testimony whose solution was not in the least obvious. On what conceivable theory it would have been proper for the judge, or would now be proper for us, to upset the verdict, we cannot imagine.
Judgment affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1