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:
LIVINGSTONE SECURITIES CORPORATION et al., Defendants, Appellants, v. Dean MARTIN et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees.
No. 6208.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
Heard Jan. 7, 1964.
Decided Feb. 25, 1964.
Mack M. Roberts, Brookline, Mass., with whom Melvin Newman, Brookline, Mass., was on brief, for appellants.
John R. Hally, Boston, Mass., with whom Nutter, McClennen & Fish, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellees.
Before WOODBURY, Chief Judge, and HARTIGAN and ALDRICH, Circuit Judges.
HARTIGAN, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, entered July 2, 1963, following a trial before the court sitting without a jury, holding the defendants-appellants to have breached their contract with the plaintiffs-appel-lees and awarding plaintiffs the sum of $40,663.25 with interest and costs. The court also dismissed the defendants’ counterclaim.
The facts, in brief, are as follows. Plaintiffs are six individuals engaged in various aspects of the entertainment industry. They were represented in the transaction here in issue by Edward Traubner, d/b./a Edward Traubner & Company, Inc., plaintiffs’ “Business Manager,” who acted as their duly authorized agent at all times material to this case.
The defendants are M. Eli Livingstone, d/b,/a Livingstone & Co., and Livingstone Securities Corporation. The individual defendant is engaged in the business of investments, with particular reference to government securities. The corporate defendant is a broker dealing in government securities.
Acting through the agency of Traub-ner, plaintiffs claim to have entered into separate contracts with defendants by which defendants agreed to sell, on or before December 31, 1959, to each plaintiff, varying amounts of United States Treasury 2i/>% bonds due to mature November 15, 1961. Plaintiffs agreed to buy at 95 20/30, i. e., $956.25 for each $1,000 bond. They were to pay by cheek a sum representing approximately five percent of the costs of the bonds, plus accrued interest and commissions. Defendants agreed to loan to plaintiffs the remaining 95 percent of the cost of the bonds, i. e., $1,721,875 for the period .December 31,1959 to November 15,1961, , interest on the loan to be paid at the rate of 5% per annum. Plaintiffs agreed to pre-pay to defendants on or before December 31, 1959 the entire amount of the .interest due on the loan. Defendants admit reaching the above agreements but deny, that they constituted an enforceable contract as no agreement was reached on the documentation necessary to carry them out. Plaintiffs claim the documentation was agreed upon at various later stages of the transaction.
The proposed transaction appealed to plaintiffs for in the year 1959 plaintiffs had incomes which placed them in the 65% to 80% federal income tax bracket. The proposed transaction had potential tax advantages in that the payment of interest by the plaintiffs in the year 1959 would entitle them to a corresponding deduction for that year and on the sale of the appreciated bonds the capital gain would be taxed at the lower applicable rate. These tax considerations were made known to defendants and were a consideration in the negotiations.
Both parties agreed that the transaction would be executed through Hirsch & Co., a New York broker. Also in order to carry out Traubner’s wish for security against unauthorized use of the pre-paid interest money, the trial court found that Livingstone offered to buy bonds of the series involved with the pre-paid interest forwarded by plaintiffs and send them to Traubner to hold as Livingstone’s agent; upon completion of the transaction Livingstone would own the interest earned by the bonds; if the transaction fell through the bonds could be liquidated and Traubner recover the full pre-paid interest or, should plaintiffs elect to take a capital gain after six months but prior to maturity of plaintiffs’ promissory notes, the bonds could be used to obtain a partial refund of the pre-paid interest. Defendants contend that they had a right to the interest oh the bonds even if the transaction was not completed.
In accordance with the above outlined agreement, Traubner sent to Hirsch & Co. two separate sets of checks to credit to the account of Livingstone Securities Corporation. The first set, six checks totalling $166,437.50 and representing the pre-paid interest on the loan, were cashed by Hirsch and credited to Livingstone Securities Corporation’s account with Hirsch. The second set of checks, representing the amount due from each plaintiff on account of margin, commission and accrued interest was not cashed by Hirsch and was returned to Traubner on January 15, 1960 pursuant to instructions given Hirsch by Samuel Livingstone, Vice President of Livingstone Securities Corporation. The reason given by defendants for the return was that Traubner’s cover letter forwarding the checks was in improper form since it directed that the bonds were to be in the names of the various plaintiffs. The trial court could find no significant difference between Livingstone’s instructions on the matter and plaintiffs’ performance.
On January 1, 1960, Traubner sent a telegram to Hirsch & Co. advising that he had remitted $166,437.50 to Hirsch for the account of Livingstone Securities Corporation, and ordering Hirsch to forward 2Yz% November 1961 Government bonds, in the face value of $175,000 to Traubner’s account at the City National Bank, Beverly Hills, California. These directions were complied with and Traubner received the bonds about January 10, 1960.
The transaction failed to reach completion, primarily because the market price of the Treasury bonds had risen since the date of the December 1959 agreement, as had the interest rates, and Livingstone would have had to absorb a loss to carry out the agreement. The lower court found that M. Eli Livingstone had breached the contract when he said that he would “not go through with the deal” after Traubner refused to use some of the money obtained from the $175,000 bonds in Traubner’s possession to make up the difference between the $101,596 margin payment and the loss that Livingstone was going to sustain on the purchase of the bonds. On November 15,1961, the maturity date, Traubner sold the bonds in his possession receiving the $175,000 face value which included the 2%% accrued interest. Defendants in their counterclaim challenged this action by Traubner, claiming that the 2% % interest gained on the bonds should have been returned to them.
In this appeal defendants raise four points which are primarily concerned with the sufficiency of the evidence to support the findings of fact made by the trial court: (1) whether an agreement was reached as to the documentation necessary to perform and carry out the agreements admittedly reached as to the purchase price of the bonds, the amount of the loans, interest to be charged on the loans and margin to be paid; (2) whether the failure of plaintiffs to execute promissory notes relieved defendants of any liability; (3) whether plaintiffs failed to make the margin payments in the manner prescribed by defendants; (4) whether upon failure of the transaction to materialize defendants were entitled to the 2y%% interest on the bonds held by Traubner.
Rule 52(a), Fed.R.Civ.P. provides in part, that “Findings of fact shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous, and due regard shall be given to the opportunity of the trial court to judge of the credibility of the witnesses.” Here, the trial court was essentially faced with a question of credibility: whether the plaintiffs’ or the defendants’ version of the transaction was the proper one. The court chose to disbelieve the testimony of Samuel Livingstone and M. Eli Livingstone and found the true facts to be as testified to by the plaintiffs. This court appreciates the advantage Rule 52 (a) gives the trial court in such a situa:tion and, after a careful examination of the record, is unable to say that the findings of fact reached by the lower court were “clearly erroneous.”
Judgment will be entered affirming the judgment of the district court.
. By stipulation of the parties following the trial, the amended complaint as to Samuel Livingstone, vice president of Livingston Securities Corporation, was dismissed.
. The reason Hirsch was used was that Traubner was familiar with previous difficulties that Livingstone had with the .Internal Revenue Service and believed the government would question anything defendants’ name was associated with. Also, Traubner insisted on an actual purchase of bonds, an actual payment of margin and an actual payment of interest so that the transaction would not be questioned.
. Following defendants’ rejection of the margin payments, at M. Eli Livingstone’s request, Traubner forwarded the $101,-596 to the New York firm of Garvin, Bantel & Oo. for the account of Livingstone Securities Corporation.
. Plaintiffs claimed an understanding that the notes would not be signed until defendants bought the bonds and that, in any ease, defendants at no time conditioned the fulfillment of their part of the contract on the signing of the notes.
. Defendants’ additional point that if a contract existed it lacked substance on the authority of Miles v. Livingstone, 301 F.2d 99 (1st Cir. 1962) is without merit.

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: 2