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:
HOOD, Commissioner of Banks of North Carolina, ex rel. NORTH CAROLINA BANK & TRUST CO. v. BELL. RECONSTRUCTION FINANCE CORPORATION v. SAME.
No. 4029.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
June 8, 1936.
Oscar Leach, of Raleigh, N. C. (Smith, Leach & Anderson, of Raleigh, N. C., on the brief), for appellant.
J. M. Broughton and Clyde A. Douglass, both of Raleigh, N. C., for appellee.
Before PARKER, NORTHCOTT, and SOPER, Circuit Judges.
PARKER, Circuit Judge.
This action was instituted in the court below by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation against the defendant, Carl W. Bell, to recover on certain promissory notes aggregating $24,300. These notes had been executed by Bell to the North Carolina Bank & Trust Company and had been indorsed and transferred by-it to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which held them as collateral security at the time of the institution of the action. While the action was pending, the indebtedness of the North Carolina Bank & Trust Company to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was paid in full; and the notes were thereupon transferred and delivered to Gurney P. Hood, commissioner of banks of the state of North Carolina, who had succeeded by operation of law to the rights and assets of the North Carolina Bank & Trust Company, which in the meantime had been placed in liquidation. The defendant then filed a plea puis darrein continuance, asking the dismissal of the action on the ground that the plaintiff had no further interest in the notes; and Hood, as commissioner of banks of the state of North Carolina, filed a petition setting forth the facts and asking that he be substituted as plaintiff in the place and stead of -the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The court below denied the motion for substitution and dismissed the action.
As the government of the United States is the owner of more than one-half the stock of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and as the amount in controversy is more than $3,000, exclusive of interest and costs, the suit was properly instituted in the court below. 28 U.S.C.A. § 42; Federal Intermediate Credit Bank v. Mitchell, 277 U.S. 213, 48 S.Ct. 449, 72 L.Ed. 854. And that court, having prop-erly acquired jurisdiction in the first instance, did not lose it because of a subsequent change in the conditions upon which jurisdiction was originally based. It is well settled that jurisdiction depending on diversity of citizenship is not lost by removal or change of citizenship, Morgan’s Heirs v. Morgan, 2 Wheat. 290, 297, 4 L.Ed. 242; Louisville, N. A. & C. Ry. Co. v. Louisville Trust Co., 174 U.S. 552, 19 S.Ct. 817, 822, 43 L.Ed. 1081; Wichita R. & Light Co. v. Public Utilities Comm., 260 U.S. 48, 54, 43 S.Ct. 51, 53, 67 L.Ed. 124; or by substitution of parties, Hardenbergh v. Ray, 151 U.S. 112, 14 S.Ct. 305, 38 L.Ed. 93; People of Porto Rico v. Ramos, 232 U.S. 627, 34 S.Ct. 461, 58 L.Ed. 763, or by the making of additional parties, Stewart v. Dunham, 115 U.S. 61, 64, 5 S.Ct. 1163, 1164, 29 L.Ed. 329; Phelps v. Oaks, 117 U.S. 236, 6 S.Ct. 714, 29 L.Ed. 888; Wichita R. & Light Co. v. Public Utilities Comm., supra; or by the reduction of the amount demanded below the jurisdictional amount, Cook v. United States, 2 Wall. 218, 17 L.Ed. 755; Kirby v. American Soda Fountain Co., 194 U. S. 141, 24 S.Ct. 619, 48 L.Ed. 911; Travelers’ Protective Ass’n of America v. Smith (C.C.A. 4th) 71 F.(2d) 511, 512; or by the transfer of the subject matter of the suit pendente lite to one who is a citizen of the same state as the opposite party, Hardenbergh v. Ray, 151 U.S. 112, 14 S.Ct. 305, 38 L.Ed. 93; Secombe v. Steele, 20 How. 94, 105, 107, 15 L.Ed. 833; Cross v. Evans (C.C.A. 5th) 86 F. 1, 4; Glover v. Shepperd (C.C.Wis.) 21 F. 481, 482; Jarboe v. Templer (C.C.Kan.) 38 F. 213, 217; Sternberger v. Continental Mines, Power & Reduction Co. (D.C.Colo.) 259 F. 293, 297 (but see Pittsburgh, S. & N. R. Co. v. Fiske [C.C.A. 3d] 178 F. 66). And there is no more reason to hold that the court loses jurisdiction in a case such as this than in any of the cases cited; for diversity of citizenship or the question of amount was just as vital to jurisdiction in those cases as is federal incorporation in the case at bar.
As the court had jurisdiction to proceed with the cause, therefore, the question as to whether it should have permitted substitution of parties or dismissed the action upon the facts presented by the opposing motions was a matter to be determined by the local practice under the Conformity Act. 28 U.S.C.A. § 724; Burns Mortgage Co., Inc., v. Fried, 292 U.S. 487, 492, 54 S.Ct. 813, 814, 78 L.Ed. 1380, 92 A. L.R. 1193; Atlantic & P. R. Co. v. Hopkins, 94 U.S. 11, 13, 24 L.Ed. 48; City of Greensboro v. Southern Pav. & Construction Co. (C.C.A. 4th) 168 F. 880, 884 (cert. den. 217 U.S. 602, 30 S.Ct. 693, 54 L.Ed. 898). And we think there can be no doubt but that the North Carolina statute requires that substitution of parties be permitted in 'such case and that the action be not dismissed. Section 461 of the Code provides: “1. No action abates by the death, marriage, or other disability of a party, or by the transfer of any interest therein, if the cause of action survives, or continues. In case of death, except in suits. for penalties and for damages m'erely. vindictive, or in case of marriage or other .disability of a party, the court, on' motion at any time within one year thereafter, or afterwards on a supplemental complaint, may allow the action to be continued,, by, or against, his representative or successor in interest. In case of any other ■transfer of interest, the action shall be continued in the name of the original party, or the court may allow the person to whom the transfer is made to be substituted in the action.” (Italics ours).
The use of the word “may” in the last clause of the statute was not intended, we think, to.confer on the court a discretion to dismiss the. action in the teeth of the provision ’that the. action should not abate by a transfer of interest, but merely a discretion to substitute the transferee as a party instead of continuing the action in the name of the original party. Plotkin v. Merchants’ Bank & Trust Co., 188 N.C. 711, 125 S.E. 541. The discretion thus conferred is a sound discretion to be exercised where the circumstances render it proper that the action- be prosecuted in the name of the transferee rather than in that of the original plaintiff; and one circumstance calling for the exercise of the discretion is the fact that the transferor, as in this case, has parted with all interest to the transferee, since section 446 of the Code requires that the action be prosecuted in the name of the real party in interest.
For the reasons stated, there was error in the order dismissing the action and refusing to permit the substitution of parties as prayed.
Reversed.

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