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:
William Gary BROWN, Jr., A Minor, By and Through Thomas E. Bryant, Jr., Guardian and Next Friend, Plaintiff, v. WATKINS MOTOR LINES, INC., et al., Defendants. C. R. McRAE, Appellant, v. Mrs. Ruth MAY, Guardian Ad Litem, Appellee.
No. 76-4477.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
June 4, 1979.
Dixon L. Pyles, Jackson, Miss., for appellant.
F. Kent Stribling, Jackson, Miss., for ap-pellee.
Before THORNBERRY, CLARK and RO-NEY, Circuit Judges.
CHARLES CLARK, Circuit Judge:
This appeal questions the power of a federal trial court on its own motion to adopt as the court’s ward a minor represented by a duly qualified guardian, fix the compensation of the guardian’s attorney, and direct his payment out of a tort judgment previously rendered by the court. We hold that, absent the presentation of some dispute, no case or controversy exists which will support such a sua sponte post-judgment assumption of power.
William Gary Brown, Jr., the four-year-old plaintiff, was severely injured in an automobile accident with a truck owned and operated by defendant Watkins Motor Lines, Inc., near Pascagoula, Mississippi. His parents retained an attorney, C. R. McRae, on a one-third contingent fee contract to represent Brown in a suit against Watkins. The Probate Court of Alabama, Brown’s home state, appointed Thomas E. Bryant, Jr., to act as guardian of Brown’s estate in Alabama. Bryant, through McRae as counsel, instituted a diversity action in the district court and won for Brown a $500,000 jury award. This award was embodied in a final judgment of the district court on September 17, 1976. Watkins moved for the entry of an order of remitti-tur, or correction, or in the alternative for a new trial. By order entered October 14, 1976, the court overruled this motion and sua sponte directed the payment of the judgment proceeds into the registry of the court. The order further provided: “[Tjhis Court shall pass upon all claims against the guardianship estate and shall retain full jurisdiction of the administration and supervision of this estate until otherwise ordered by this Court.” Watkins deposited the $500,000 plus interest with the district court in full payment and satisfaction of the judgment and did not participate further in the cause.
On November 18,1976, Bryant moved the district court to disburse the registry funds to him in his guardianship capacity. The trial judge refused to order distribution of the judgment proceeds until an ancillary guardianship was set up in Mississippi as required by the law of that state. Miss. Code Ann. §§ 93-13-181 through 185 (1972). After that was done and a hearing had been held, the court, by order entered December 14, 1976, denied the relief requested. Instead, over the objections of both Bryant and McRae, it fixed McRae’s attorney fees and expenses at $93,692.67, then ordered those funds paid to McRae and the balance paid into the Chancery Court of Hinds County, Mississippi, where the ancillary guardianship had been established. In the course of an oral opinion delivered at the conclusion of the hearing, the district court stated that it was “precluding” any question as to attorney’s fees to the Chancery Court of Hinds County and was only ordering paid to that court the net amount of the judgment proceeds, ex attorney’s fees. On December 30, 1976, the guardian withdrew a registry check for $411,753.68. On January 3, 1977, McRae withdrew a registry check for $93,692.67.
On this appeal, McRae contends that the district court lacked jurisdiction to fix the portion of the judgment which should be awarded as attorney’s fees and expenses. Alternatively McRae argues that it was an abuse of discretion to ignore his one-third contingent fee contract and grant a totally inadequate allowance of 15 percent of the judgment. Because we find that the district court had no jurisdiction to allocate the final judgment, we can not address the issue of adequacy.
It cannot seriously be doubted that prior to distributing a judgment award a court has the power to decide a contest between the judgment creditor and his attorney over the appropriate amount of the attorney’s fee lien on the judgment. Sprague v. Ticonic National Bank, 307 U.S. 161, 59 S.Ct. 777, 83 L.Ed. 1184 (1939); United States v. Equitable Trust Co., 283 U.S. 738, 51 S.Ct. 639, 75 L.Ed. 1379 (1931); Garrett v. McRee, 201 F.2d 250 (10th Cir. 1953). However, in the present action there was no request for such relief. The parents of the injured minor had entered into a contingent fee contract with McRae before litigation commenced. Neither the Browns nor Bryant has expressed dissatisfaction with that contract, nor has its validity been questioned. According to comment of counsel, the contract has been approved by the original guardianship court in Alabama.
Today’s appeal grew out of the district court’s apparent doubt that Bryant or the state guardianship courts would protect the interests of the four-year-old Brown. In a companion case earlier instituted by Bryant in the name of William Brown’s brother for injuries from the same accident, McRae had received $266,666.66 in attorney’s fees on a one-third contingent fee contract similar to the one asserted here. Obviously troubled by the aggregate fees McRae was taking from the children’s estate, the district judge commented:
Well, let’s just make this perfectly clear, that in a case where a guardian is appointed, and of course this is an unusual case because this little boy had two living parents. . . . [B]ut you came over here and got a statutory guardian from Mobile County, complete stranger to this child. He couldn’t possibly have any interest or knowledge in that little boy, and to have that complete rank stranger appointed as his guardian and have him decide with you about what your attorney’s fee is going to be, I would say he would have a stacked jury to start off with, and I’m not even about to do that. Matter of fact, I want to hear from you how much money you took out of this $800,000 verdict, Mr. Counsel. You want to tell me about that?
Assuming someone may wish to raise a controversy over McRae’s fees, our resolution of the present appeal would not affect its presentation at a later time to a court having jurisdiction. However, no adverse claims to the judgment funds have been asserted in the district court. When Bryant petitioned the court to transfer the entire judgment to the Hinds County Chancery Court, the district court adopted the position that Brown was “the ward of this court to the extent of the fixation of attorney’s fees,” and of its own motion proceeded to allocate the judgment. This it could not do. The absence of a live controversy before the district court mandates that we vacate for lack of jurisdiction its decision to apportion the award.
Article III of the United States Constitution limits the power of federal courts to deciding only those questions arising in a “case” or “controversy.” Those terms are not amenable to precise definitions or easy application. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968). The judicial power conferred by the Constitution has been defined as “ ‘the power of a court to decide and pronounce a judgment and carry it into effect between persons and parties who bring a case before it for decision.’ ” Muskrat v. United States, 219 U.S. 346, 31 S.Ct. 250, 55 L.Ed. 246 (1911) (emphasis added), quoting, Miller, Const. 314. If no party before a court makes or suggests any contest, but rather all litigants desire precisely the same result, there can be no case or controversy within the meaning of Article III. Moore v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 47, 91 S.Ct. 1292, 28 L.Ed.2d 590 (1971).
Although the district court’s attempt to protect what it considered to be the best interests of the minor is laudable, it had no authority to force upon the parties a remedy that they did not seek. The case or controversy in the federal forum ended with payment of the judgment into the registry of the court. The unopposed petition to transfer the judgment intact to the Hinds County Chancery Court was a ministerial request which should have been granted. The court’s refusal to do so, followed by a sua sponte invocation of its equity power in an effort to protect the minor as its ward, was the assumption of a jurisdiction it lacked.
By asserting that it was precluding the state court from exercising its authority to distribute Brown’s estate, the district court’s order has effectively stayed the Hinds County Chancery Court’s actions in administering the guardianship to the detriment of the litigants there. In the interests of justice, that portion of the district court’s order adjudicating the amount to be paid C. R. McRae as attorney’s fees and expenses is found to be beyond the district court’s jurisdiction and is vacated. 28 U.S. C.A. § 2106. Since vacating the extra-jurisdictional allocation eliminates the conflict between the district court and the state guardianship courts, and since we are advised that McRae has transferred the funds paid to Mm over to the Hinds County Chancery Court, we dismiss this appeal.
ORDER VACATED IN PART and APPEAL DISMISSED.
. Cappel v. Adams, 434 F.2d 1278 (5th Cir. 1970), is distinguishable. There, as in Garrett v. McRee, supra, the court having judgment proceeds in its coffers was petitioned to fix attorney’s fees. In Cappel, we held that the court had the power to award an amount different from the terms of a contract. In the case at bar, however, no party petitioned the district court to fix such fees.

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