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 "natural persons". 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:
MOORE v. SNIDER.
No. 7322.
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Argued Dec. 5, 1939.
Decided Jan. 15, 1940.
Writ of Certiorari Denied April 8, 1940.
See-U.S.-, 60 S.Ct. 808, 84 L.Ed.-.
Alfons B. Landa and Seth W. Richardson, both of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
Cornelius H. Doherty, of Washington, D. C., for appellee.
Before GRONER, C. J., and MILLER and VINSON, JJ.
GRONER, C. J.
Appellee (plaintiff below), as assignee of Garfinckel & Company, brought this action against appellant (defendant below) to recover $2,196.25, with interest. Defendant pleaded the statute of limitations, D.C.Code 1929, T. ‘24, § 341. Plaintiff replied that defendant had acknowledged the debt in writing within a year of the commencement of the suit. Defendant’s rejoinder asserted the acknowledgment was obtained by fraudulent representations. The trial court, on the pleadings, granted plaintiff’s motion for judgment. On this appeal the single question is whether the paper signed by the defendant under the circumstances described in the rejoinder revived the debt so as to defeat the statute of limitations.
The pleadings show that in 1930 appellant purchased merchandise to the amount of the claim from Garfinckel’s store and promised to pay the account. In May, 1937, she signed a prepared form-statement, as follows:
“The balance of $2,196.25 as of close of business May 27, 1937, due the Julius Gar-finckel & Co. does not include consigned merchandise and is correct, except as noted below.
“Exceptions. To the best of my knowledge the above is correct.”
The paper was signed in response to a written request stating that the company’s auditors were making a regular examination of its accounts and wished to verify them from an independent source. The communication contained the statement that it was not a dun but simply a request for verification, and it is claimed appellant was induced to sign it by statements that the writing was for the one and only purpose of verifying books of account of Garfinckel & Company, and was of no legal significance whatever, when, as a matter of fact, the real purpose was to defeat the statute of limitations.
In this state of the record, appellant insists that the statute is not avoided unless the acknowledgment is made under conditions which show a clear intention to pay the debt, and that there is nothing to show such intention.
Appellee insists that the signed statement is a'sufficient acknowledgment of the debt to remove the bar of the statute and that the alleged ground of fraud in the inducement was no more than a representation of law on which the defendant had no right to rely.
The trial court was of opinion that the acknowledgment of the debt as still subsisting was sufficient to avoid the statute, and in fairness to that court we are obliged to agree that words may be found in some of the cases in this jurisdiction which justify the conclusion. See Green v. Reeves, 47 App.D.C. 83, 86; Strong v. Andros, 34 App.D.C. 278, 281, 282, 19 Ann. Cas. 101; Catholic University v. Waggaman, 32 App.D.C. 307, 318-9. In those cases the acknowledgment itself was treated as the operative fact, but a review of the history of the rule will show that the acknowledgment is really only evidence of a promise to pay. The promise implied is what counts. This idea is inherent in our former decisions, even though at times it was not as clearly stated as the true rule required. See Ruppert v. Beavans, 2 App.D.C. 298, 301, 302; Bean v. Wheatley, 13 App.D.C. 473, 480; Hornblower v. George Washington University, 31 App.D.C. 64, 73, 74, 14 Ann.Cas. 696. And D.C.Code, Tit. 11, sec. 5, which requires acknowledgments to be in writing, speaks of “acknowledgment” as “sufficient evidence of a new or continuing contract whereby to take any case out of the operation of the statute of limitations.” (Italics supplied.) It follows, we think, that the acknowledgment must not be accompanied by circumstances which negative any intention or promise to pay. Or, as was said by Mr. Justice Story in Bell v. Morrison, 1 Pet, 351, 362, 7 L.Ed. 174: “If there be no express promise, but a promise is to be raised by implication of law, from the acknowledgment of the party, such acknowledgment ought to contain an unqualified and direct admission of a previous, subsisting debt, which the party is liable, and willing, to pay. If there be accompanying circumstances, which repel the presumption of a promise or intention to pay; if the expressions be equivocal, vague and indeterminate, leading to no' certain conclusion, but at best to probable inferences, which may affeót different minds in different ways; we think, they ought not to go to a jury as evidence of a new promise, to revive the cause of action.”
And see on the same subject, Shepherd v. Thompson, 122 U.S. 231, 7 S.Ct. 1229, 30 L.Ed. 1156, and the cases cited therein.
In Hayden v. International Banking Corp., 59 App.D.C. 313, 41 F.2d 107, 109, upon which appellee chiefly relies, the debt- or, in correspondence with his creditor, referred to his obligation a number of times as “a note of mine”, “your loan to me”, and proposed “arranging with you about my note on the best terms possible”, in line with which he was continuing his efforts to sell some property and if he did it would simplify his position considerably. Reading this correspondence in its entirety, we held that there was a sufficient acknowledgment from which a promise to pay might be implied, and in all of our other cases cited by appellee the facts show an unconditional acknowledgment and circumstances raising at least an implication of a promise to pay. The use of language in some of them indicating that an acknowledgment by the debtor of the debt as still subsisting, of itself defeats limitations, was unfortunate and, in the facts of the cases, unnecessary. It would hardly be contended that if the debtor wrote his creditor admitting the debt but asserting that he did not intend to pay it, the admission would in the circumstances bar the statute, and yet this would be the necessary effect of applying the rule for which appellee contends. We think, to the contrary, that in order to supply an inference of “a new or continuing contract”, the circumstances of the acknowledgment must show a clear intention to pay the debt. See Rahilly v. O’Laughlin, 8 Cir., 1 F.2d 1, a case arising on a statute in all .material respects identical with that in the District of Columbia.
In the instant case collection of the debt sued on had been barred by the statute for more than four years. Appellant alleges in her replication that the written acknowledgment was obtained by her creditor by falsely stating to her that her admission of the correctness of the account was “for the one and only purpose of verifying its accounts and was of no legal significance whatsoever” and that, except for this representation, she would not have signed the paper. If this statement is true, the only reasonable inference therefrom repels the thought that the acknowledgment of itself implied a promise or willingness to pay the debt. In these circumstances, we think the court below was in error in entering judgment on the pleadings. Defendant should be permitted to introduce evidence to prove the allegations in her rejoinder, and if it shall appear that the accompanying circumstances under which the acknowledgment was made are such as to repel or leave in doubt the inference that appellant intended to indicate a willingness to pay, the plaintiff ought not to have judgment.
Reversed and remanded.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1