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:
S. S. WHITE DENTAL MFG. CO. v. J. A. FISCHER CO., Inc., et al.
No. 81.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Dec. 5, 1938.
Paul & Paul, of Philadelphia, Pa., and Darby & Darby, of New York City (John Hogg Austin and Henry N. Paul, Jr., both of Philadelphia, Pa., of counsel), for appellant.
Mock & Blum, of New York City, for appellees.
Before L. HAND, SWAN, and CHASE, Circuit Judges.
CHASE, Circuit Judge.
The suit is on claims 1, 2, 8, 9 and 10 of U. S. Patent No. 1,649,310 granted on November 15, 1927 to Emmet A. Joline for a flexible shaft. The plaintiff is the sole owner of the patent. The defendants make and sell flexible shafting. If the claims are valid and they have infringed, they have done so in the Southern District of New York where they do business at the same address.
The patent relates to shafting flexible enough to be suitable for use in transmitting power where conditions are not right for straight line transmission. The shafting is ordinarily enclosed in a flexible casing whose characteristics do not materially affect the flexibility of the shafting itself and permit its use for the transmission of power from a source of supply to an element not in alignment with it. The use of such an assembly as the driving means for an automobile speedometer provides a good practical illustration of its largely accepted use.
Before Joline entered the patent field with his flexible shaft, there were many of them in use. His claimed departure from what was well known and long established practice is confined to the swaging of the terminals of his shaft in such a way that the wire strands out of which the shaft was made were so pressed together that they would not fray or unravel in use. The preferred way to make a flexible shaft of the kind to which Joline was attentive is to wind a plurality of strands of wires closely around a core. It was common practice to solder the ends to prevent unwinding and to put on a ferrule or sleeve to form an attaching tip. Joline said in his specifications: “The principal objects of my invention are to provide a flexible shaft with terminal tips that will efficiently prevent the accidental displacement of the strands of the fabricated shaft, and that will tend greatly to decrease the cost of production of such shaft”.
What he did was to swage the ends into the shape wanted for the terminal tips by the use of sufficient pressure to squeeze the wires together so tightly that they remained interlocked in use without the addition of solder or anything else to hold them in place. What he claimed is well enough shown for present purposes by claim 1 which reads: “1. A coiled wire flexible shaft having its terminals swaged, and the wire strands forming the shaft so distorted and interlocked thereby as to of themselves maintain said terminals inert and the shaft intact.”
It seems that with the lightening of speedometer parts it has been possible to use Joline’s cheaper flexible shaft satisfactorily. It does not, however, appear to be an inventive advance beyond Veeder’s United States patent No. 1,421,623 granted July 4, 1922 for a flexible shaft and method of manufacturing it.
Veeder used a shaft of the time honored construction of wires coiled upon a core. Over this he put a closely fitting cylindrical tube and said, “the tube and shaft are then swaged into polygonal form (preferably square) whereby additional security against the uncoiling or opening of the coils of the shaft is obtained and at the same time the end portion of the shaft is given a form which assures driving engagement with the coacting member.” This was shown as a way to obviate the use of solder. Veeder recognized that solder would, of course, provide added security against uncoiling but disclosed that its use was not necessary. He said in his specifications: “It is generally desirable to fill with solder the coils of the shaft to be covered before the tube is placed, but the swaging may suffice if the inner as well as the outer coils of wire are distorted so as to prevent uncoiling.”
Such a disclosure leaves nothing new in what Joline did. The urge for cheapness of manufacture doubtless prompted the omission of the tube. At most it was but the non-inventive act of leaving off a part used to cover the wire; omitting the function of that part; and relying only upon distortion by swaging to form the terminal tip and prevent uncoiling. Richards v. Chase Elevator Company, 159 U.S. 477, 16 S.Ct. 53, 40 L.Ed. 225; Anchor Cap & Closure Corporation v. Linhardt, 8 Cir., 56 F.2d 542. When the old act of swaging was performed on the ends to such an extent that the wires were “distorted so as to prevent uncoiling” as Veeder stated they might be, Joline but followed Veeder. This did not rise to the level of invention. Kilbourne v. W. Bingham Co., 6 Cir., 50 F. 697. And so all claims in suit are held invalid.
Decree 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