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:
NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, a Corporation, Appellant, v. Laveda NOONAN, Appellee.
No. 13960.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Sept. 24, 1954.
Rehearing Denied Oct. 26, 1954.
Davis, Jensen & Martin, Theodore B. Jensen, Donald W. McEwen, Portland, Or., for appellant.
Charles D. Dolph, Martin Schedler, Portland, Or., for appellee.
Before HEALY, POPE, and CHAMBERS, Circuit Judges.
HEALY, Circuit Judge.
This is a suit on a policy of life insurance. The contract contained a clause barring recovery of the principal sum if death by suicide should occur within a year of the issuance of the policy. The insured became a suicide. The trial court, deeming the contract to be ambiguous as regards the date on which the year began to run, resolved the ambiguity in favor of the beneficiary (appellee here) and accordingly gave judgment for the latter. The sole question on the Company’s appeal is whether an ambiguity exists in the respect mentioned.
The application for the insurance was executed by the insured on June 15,1951. For the obvious purpose of giving the insured the benefit of a lower premium rate based on his insurance age, the application asked in item 18 thereof that the policy be written to take effect March 14, 1951. A further provision of the application reads: “It is mutually agreed that: If the Applicant shall have paid the soliciting agent in cash, * * *, an amount which equals the full first premium * * *, and if the Company shall receive evidence satisfactory to it that at the time of completion of this application the proposed Insured * * * was an acceptable risk for said policy * * *, the policy as applied for shall be deemed to be in effect as from the date specified in item 18 above as if it had been delivered.”
In conformity with the application, the policy thereafter issued contained on its first page the following statement: “The anniversaries and insurance years of this Policy shall be determined from March 14, 1951, the date as of which this policy shall be deemed to take effect.” Following this provision, and immediately preceding the signatures of the Company’s authorized officers appears the clause: “In witness whereof the New York Life Insurance Company has caused this Policy to be executed on June 22, 1951, which is its date of issue.” [Italics ours.] The suicide provision in question reads: “In event of suicide within one year from the date of issue of this Policy, whether the Insured be sane or insane, the insurance under this Policy shall be a sum equal to the premiums hereon which shall have been paid to and received by the Company and no more.” [Italics ours.] The incontestability clause, so far as material, reads: “This Policy shall be incontestable after it has been in force during the lifetime of the Insured for one year from its date of issue * * [Italics ours.]
The insured’s death by suicide occurred May 23, 1952. Appellant thereafter tendered to the beneficiary the premiums paid, with interest. The tender was rejected, and the beneficiary brought this suit for recovery of the face amount of the policy. As already indicated, the court, believing the provisions of the policy and the application therefor to be conflicting or ambiguous as to the controlling date, granted judgment for the beneficiary.
We are not able to agree that conflict or ambiguity exists. The entire contract is set out in the policy and the application, which latter was expressly made a part of the contract. Clearly, the policy was in effect from March 14, 1951 for every purpose except the suicide and incontestability provisions. The latter are on their face governed by “the date of issue,” which was specifically stated in the policy to be June 22, 1951. The two dates, March 14, 1951, and June 22, 1951, serve entirely different purposes, as is readily ascertainable from a reading of the instrument. The insured’s suicide occurred within one year from the specified date of issue, hence applicant’s obligation was limited to the return of premiums paid.
A number of authorities are cited by the parties, particularly by appellant, but their citation in this opinion would serve no useful purpose.
Reversed.
. The application indicates that the insured became 52 years of age on September 15, 1950.

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