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:
Elliott Rod JOHNSON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. James A. LYNAUGH, Director, Texas Department of Corrections, Respondent-Appellee.
No. 87-2677.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
June 23, 1987.
Elliott Rod Johnson, pro se.
James Rebholz, New Orleans, La., for petitioner-appellant.
Jim Mattox, Atty. Gen., Paula C. Offenhauser, Asst. Atty. Gen., Austin, Tex., for respondent-appellee.
Before CLARK, Chief Judge, POLITZ and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
BY THE COURT:
In this pro se, successive, delayed petition, Elliott Rod Johnson asserts four grounds of constitutional error in his trial for capital murder at which Johnson received the death penalty. The chronology of this case is as follows:
April 8,1982 — Murder of Joe Angel Granado
May 13,1982 — Johnson indicted
May 25-6,1983 — Trial
Oct. 31,1984 —Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms, 691 S.W.2d 619
Jan. 30,1985 — Rehearing denied
March 20,1985 — Rehearing denied
Oct. 7,1985 — Petition for certiorari denied by the U.S. Supreme Court
Oct. 30,1985 — Execution date set, Dec. 4,1985
Nov. 27,1985 — Application for writ of habeas corpus and stay to Texas trial court
Nov. 27,1985 — Trial court denies habeas corpus relief
Dec. 3,1985 — Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denies habeas corpus relief
Dec. 3,1986 — District Court, Eastern District of Texas, grants stay
May 23,1986 — District Court, Eastern District of Texas, denies habeas corpus relief and vacates stay
June 17,1986 — District Court, Eastern District of Texas, denies a certificate of probable cause, 794 F.2d 1011
June 1986 — Execution date reset for July 23,1986
June 30,1986 — Application for a writ of habeas corpus and stay to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
July 18,1986 — Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals grants stay and certificate of probable cause
Nov. 12,1986 — Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms denial of habeas relief, 804 F.2d 300
Dec. 2,1986 — Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals orders mandate to issue
Jan. 8,1987 — Execution date reset for Feb. 11,1987
Feb. 5,1987 — Application for stay to the U.S. Supreme Court
Feb. 10,1987 — Justice White grants stay of execution, — U.S.-, 107 S.Ct. 1262, 94 L.Ed.2d 124
May 4,1987 — Certiorari denied, stay vacated automatically, — U.S.-, 107 S.Ct. 1988, 95 L.2d.2d 827
May 1987 — Execution date reset for June 24,1987
June 16,1987 — Second petition for a writ of habeas corpus verified
June 22,1987 — Texas trial court denies habeas corpus relief
June 22,1987 — Second petition for habeas corpus filed with the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas
June 23,1987 — Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denies habeas corpus relief
June 23,1987 — United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas, denies habeas corpus relief and certificate of probable cause
Based upon an opinion dealing with every issue raised by Johnson in this successive petition, the district court denied habeas corpus relief for abuse of the writ under Rule 9(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Court for failure of Johnson to assert in his prior petition the new grounds now raised. For the reasons stated by the district court, we agree with the denial of certificate of probable cause.
Alternatively, the district court considered each of the four issues sought to be raised by Johnson and found each to be legally, procedurally or factually lacking in merit. We have examined each of them and agree that they are without merit. We would add only the following brief comments. The prosecutor did not characterize Johnson’s contentions as “silly little technicalities.” The phrase was part of an urging of the jury to vigorously enforce the law. It was used in reference to some other unidentified cases in which criminals were not convicted because of some “silly little technicality involving searches or confessions or whatever.” We agree with the district court that Johnson has made no showing that this remark deprived him of a fundamentally fair trial. With regard to the constitutional necessity for the appointment of a special prosecutor, we would add that Johnson’s contention is based on the attenuated claim that a partner of a lawyer representing a co-defendant, who was tried separately from Johnson, somehow caused prejudice to Johnson by accepting employment as an assistant district attorney. We agree that Johnson’s claim of constitutional error is frivolous. Finally, it could not possibly be constitutionally prejudicial to Johnson for the court to require an attorney to describe to the court his true experience in handling criminal cases to test Johnson’s false claim that counsel was so inexperienced he could not furnish adequate representation.
For the reasons stated above, the application of Elliott Rod Johnson for permission to appeal in forma pauperis is GRANTED. The application for a certificate of probable cause is DENIED. The application for a stay of the order of the 252nd Judicial District Court of Jefferson County, Texas, setting the execution of Petitioner Elliott Rod Johnson for June 24, 1987, is DENIED.

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