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:
MID-AMERICA TRANSPORTATION COMPANY, INC., Appellant, v. NATIONAL MARINE SERVICE, INC., et al., Appellees.
No. 75-1236.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted Oct. 17, 1975.
Decided Nov. 11, 1975.
Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Dec. 3, 1975.
Certiorari Denied April 19, 1976.
See 96 S.Ct. 1671.
Fritz G. Faerber, Lucas & Murphy, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant.
James W. Herron, Lewis, Rice, Tucker, Allen & Chubb, St. Louis, Mo., for appellees.
Before CLARK, Associate Justice, and LAY and ROSS, Circuit Judges.
Associate Justice Tom C. Clark, United States Supreme Court, Retired, sitting by designation.
PER CURIAM.
This admiralty ease is before this court for the second time. In our original opinion we remanded to the trial court for further evidence and determination in keeping with the views expressed therein. Mid-America Transportation Co., Inc. v. National Marine Service, Inc., 497 F.2d 776 (8th Cir. 1974).
No useful purpose would be served in again setting forth the facts in detail since that has already been accomplished by Judge Talbot Smith in our prior decision. Id. Suffice it to say that plaintiff’s barge was damaged while in the tow of a tug owned by the defendant. Judge Wangelin originally found that the damage occurred during a grounding of the barge, but held that the barge owner had not proved negligence on the part of the tug since it had not proved either when or where the grounding took place.
It was conceded that if the grounding took place outside the channel or on a known obstruction in the channel that the tug owner was liable. On the other hand, if the grounding took place on an unknown object in the channel the tug owner was not to be presumed negligent. In our original opinion, we held that the fact that the barge was shown to have been damaged by grounding was sufficient to require “ . . . the tug to come forward to establish that she was in the channel and did not hit a known obstruction therein or to furnish other exculpatory explanation . . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) Id. at 780. We thereupon directed
further proceedings at which the tug will be given an opportunity (subject to rebuttal by the barge) to carry such burden. If it fails to do so, the District Court may draw an inference of fact unfavorable to it. On the other hand, if the tug does come forward with evidence sufficient to cast doubt upon the validity of the inference arising from the facts, the barge will not have sustained the burden of ultimate persuasion resting upon it from the start.
Id. at 780-781.
On rehearing the defendant tug owner presented the deposition testimony of one Crawford, the pilot at the time the damage occurred. He testified that as far as he knew the barge was within the channel when the damage occurred and that there was no obstruction in the channel of which he was aware. The plaintiff presented no evidence to show that at the time of the grounding the barge was outside the channel nor that there were any known obstructions in the channel in the stretch of the river where the grounding occurred. After receiving this additional evidence Judge Wangelin found that the “ . . . defendants produced sufficient evidence to establish that the M/V National Progress and its tow were in channel and did not hit a known obstruction while within the channel.” Mid-America Transportation Co., Inc. v. National Marine Service, Inc., No. 71 A 692(3) (E.D. Mo., filed Mar. 5, 1975).
Based upon our independent review of the evidence this finding of fact is not clearly erroneous. In making such finding, Judge Wangelin clearly complied with the law of the case as hereinbefore quoted from our original opinion. The judgment of the trial court is therefore affirmed.

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