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:
Charles Leroy MELQUIST, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Frank J. PATE, Warden, Illinois State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee.
No. 16284.
United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.
July 24, 1968.
John Powers Crowley, Joseph E. McHugh, Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
William G. Clark, Atty. Gen., of Illinois, Robert F. Nix, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., William V. Hopf, State’s Atty., of DuPage County, Ill., Wheaton, Ill., for respondent-appellee; John J. O’Toole, Asst. Atty. Gen., Edward W. Kowal, Asst. State’s Atty., of DuPage County, of counsel.
Before SCHNACKENBERG, SWY-GERT and FAIRCHILD, Circuit Judges.
SCHNACKENBERG, Circuit Judge.
Charles Leroy Melquist, petitioner (also described as “defendant”), has appealed from an order of the district court entered September 16, 1965 which denied his petition for writ of habeas corpus filed September 10, 1965, as amended.
In this court, counsel for both parties hereto agree with the following statement of facts:
As a result of a telephone call, defendant went to the Addison Police Department in Addison, Illinois, about 11:30 P.M. on Sunday, November 16, 1958. The following morning [November 17], between the hours of 12:15 A.M. and 1:15 A.M., the defendant was questioned by William Deveaney, a sergeant in the Addison Police Department, in regard to the murder of Bonnie Lee Scott. The questioning was temporarily interrupted about 1:15 A.M. only to resume about 2 A.M. At approximately 3:15 A.M. defendant was released by the police with directions to return to the station at 10 A.M.
Defendant returned to the Addison Police Station at approximately 10 A.M. as directed, and throughout the day [November 17] was subject to questioning, first in the Police Station, then in the offices of John Reed and Associates in Chicago, Illinois, and finally in the office of Frank Ferlic, State’s Attorney [sic] of Cook County, Illinois. Statements were made by defendant in Reed’s office and in Ferlic’s office. At. approximately 11 P.M. [November 17] defendant was taken from the State’s Attorney’s office of Cook County to the Bedford Park Police Station in Bedford Park, Illinois, by Chief Smith of the Cook County Sheriff’s Police and John Roche, Supervising Captain of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.
The record shows that at some time after 10 A.M. on November 18, 1958 Judge Abraham L. Marovitz of the Criminal Court of Cook County, Illinois, ordered the issue of a writ of habeas corpus and that the petition for the writ had been presented to the clerk of the Criminal Court at 9:36 A.M. on said date. The record further shows that Judge Marovitz on the same date, November 18, ordered the writ quashed and the petition dismissed.
After 10 A.M. on November 18, 1958, Chief of Police Holler of Villa Park, DuPage County, and deputy sheriffs Mertes and Lang of DuPage County went to the Cook County sheriff’s office in Bedford Park. At that time defendant was in the custody of the Cook County sheriff’s police.
Captain Hederman of the Cook County sheriff’s police called Chief deputy sheriff Smith of Cook County about 9 A.M. on November 18 and told him that attorney McDonnell had told him he had a writ to produce defendant. Smith called the office of the deputy sheriff of Cook County three times (the last at 10 A.M.) and learned that no writ had been filed. After 10 A.M. defendant was transported in Smith’s car from Bedford Park to the Villa Park police station in DuPage County where they arrived at about 11 A.M.
Mertes, deputy sheriff of DuPage County, who had accompanied defendant from Bedford Park in another car, served defendant with an arrest warrant issued by DuPage County Justice of the Peace Daw that morning. Defendant was then sitting in Smith’s car and custody of him was turned over to Chief Holler.
Captain Roche was deputized as a deputy sheriff of DuPage County. He was not aware of a writ of habeas corpus before he turned over custody of defendant to Holler. Chief deputy sheriff Smith of Cook County was first informed that a writ had been issued after the defendant had been arrested and turned over to the DuPage County authorities. From the time defendant was turned over to Mertes at the place where the body was found, he was not in the custody of Cook County officers.
We agree wth the attorney general of Illinois when he says that the writ of habeas corpus issued by Judge Marovitz was what is commonly known as a booking writ, the purpose of which is either to compel the authorities holding a suspect to release him or to formally arrest him in order that there may be a preliminary hearing to determine whether a crime had been committed and that probable cause existed for the arrest of the person for whose benefit the writ was issued. However, in the case at bar petitioner Melquist was arrested on a warrant charging him with the crime of murder in DuPage County, where the warrant was issued. Even though it is probable that the DuPage County authorities were not actually aware of the issuance of the writ of habeas corpus in Cook County, that fact is irrelevant. Actually the DuPage County authorities in effect acceded to the demands of the Cook County writ of habeas corpus by booking petitioner as required by the writ, which was later quashed.
Petitioner was properly arrested by DuPage County officials and his detention by them was legal. The order of the district court from which petitioner has appealed is affirmed.
Order affirmed.
. The district court ordered that petitioner’s motion for a certificate of probable eause, which it allowed was to be considered as a notice of appeal.
. In the ear were also officer John Roche of the Cook County sheriff’s office, Chief Holler and deputy Lang of DuPage County. The defendant was handcuffed to Roche and Holler.

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