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:
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. CONSOLIDATED MACHINE TOOL CORPORATION.
Docket 20516.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
March 23, 1948.
For prior opinion see 163 F.2d 376.
Arthur L. Stern, of Rochester, N.Y., for Consolidated Machine Tool Corporation.
Owsley Vose and David P. Findling, both of Washington, D. C., for the Board.
Before L. HAND, SWAN and FRANK, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Soon after the 'order of this court was entered, a majority of the employees in the Company’s Pattern Making Department petitioned the Board under § 9(c) (1) (A) (ii) of the Amended Act for “decertification” of the union which, on the appeal, we had held to be their “exclusive bargaining agent”; and the employer has been permitted to intervene in that proceeding. However, the Regional Director has refused to issue any notice of hearing upon the application, and the Board has sustained his refusal “on the ground that compliance with the Board’s order as enforced by the Circuit Court of Appeals * * * has not yet been effected.” The employer now moves us to modify our- order so as to allow the Board to proceed with the petition.
So far as the Board’s position may rest upon the notion that our order as such precludes it or its officers from proceeding with the petition, we need only say that we did not intend it to have any such effect; and that the Board is entirely free to take any action which it chooses: either to withdraw the present certification or to substitute a new “bargaining representative.” We are not aware that it thinks otherwise; but we say this to lay any doubts. On the other hand, so far as the Board refuses to act upon the petition until the employer has complied with our order, it is for the Board to decide whether noncompliance is a reason for refusing to consider the employees’ petition. Finally, we refuse to modify our order, so far as it directs the employer to deal with the present representative. Even though it may be true that the Amended Act has now made lawful the conduct of Maier on which the order was in part based, the refusal to deal with the duly selected “bargaining representative” remains an “unfair labor practice” which still supports the Board’s order and our order.
Motion denied.
§ 159(e) (1) (A) (ii), Title 29 Ü.S.C.A.

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: 0