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:
TAYLOR DRUG STORES, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ASSOCIATED DRY GOODS CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 76-1486.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Argued June 23, 1977.
Decided and Filed Aug. 12, 1977.
Charles G. Middleton, III, Albert F. Reut-linger, Middleton, Reutlinger & Baird, Louisville, Ky., for plaintiff-appellant.
John E. Tarrant, Bert T. Combs, Edwin S. Hopson, Louisville, Ky., for Associated Dry Goods.
Stuart A. Handmaker, K. S. Handmaker, Louisville, Ky., for Ben Snyder’s Inc.
Kenneth L. Anderson, Louisville, Ky., for Sears & Roebuck Co.
Before EDWARDS and PECK, Circuit Judges, and WEINMAN, Senior District Judge.
Honorable Carl A. Weinman, Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.
PER CURIAM.
Appellant Taylor Drug Stores, Inc., appeals from summary judgment entered for all defendants in a civil action which alleged violation of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, 15 U.S.C. § 1 (1970), as amended (Supp. V, 1975); id. § 15 (1970). In 1969 at the beginning of the events which led to this litigation, appellant was a general drug company which operated approximately 20 drug stores in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and followed the practice of stayinjg open on Sundays. Defendants-appellees, Retail Merchants Association, Associated Dry Goods Corporation, Ben Snyder, Inc., and Sears, Roebuck Company, decided to file a suit in the Jefferson County Circuit Court to keep plaintiff and others from continuing to do business on Sunday as to those portions of its sales which were non-necessities of life to which the Kentucky Sunday Closing Law applied. Ky.Rev.Stat. § 436.160.
After trial on the complaint filed by our current defendants, the Jefferson County Circuit Court issued first a temporary injunction (which was affirmed on appeal to the Kentucky Court of Appeals) and then a permanent injunction. The appeal of the permanent injunction was voluntarily dismissed by appellants, including Taylor Drug Stores, and the injunction was dissolved by agreement, when the Kentucky General Assembly amended the Sunday closing law mooting the issue. Act of February 25, 1972, ch. 18, [1972] Ky. Acts 44, amending Ky.Rev.Stat. § 436.160 (codified at Ky.Rev. Stat. §§ 436.160, .165).
Claiming damages represented by loss of profits when its business was diminished for three years while it was enjoined from Sunday operations, plaintiff Taylor Drug Stores filed the instant antitrust suit alleging that defendants had conspired to bring the Jefferson County injunction suit with the real motive of restraining Taylor Drug Stores, Inc.’s competition. The suit alleged that at the time of the Jefferson County Circuit Court litigation brought by defendants seeking to enforce the Kentucky Sunday Closing Law against plaintiff, some of the present defendants were themselves operating across the river in Indiana, in violation of the Indiana Sunday Closing Law.
On the filing of this antitrust complaint, and after the conducting of extensive discovery, motions for summary judgment were filed by defendants-appellees. In a careful opinion, the District Court granted defendants-appellees’ motion for summary judgment as to Count II of the complaint. While relying upon the general exception to the antitrust laws first defined in Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127, 81 S.Ct. 523, 5 L.Ed.2d 464 (1961), and United Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657, 669-72, 85 S.Ct. 1585, 14 L.Ed.2d 626 (1965), he also recognized and discussed the holding of the Supreme Court in California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508,92 S.Ct. 609, 30 L.Ed.2d 642 (1972). In the latter case the Supreme Court held that concerted action by petitioners to institute both state and federal litigation to resist and defeat applications by respondents to acquire trucking operating rights could represent antitrust violations regardless of the general right of all citizens to have access to the courts. In California Motor Transport the Court said:
A combination of entrepreneurs to harass and deter their competitors from having “free and unlimited access” to the agencies and courts, to defeat that right by massive, concerted, and purposeful activities of the group are ways of building up one empire and destroying another.
Id. at 515, 92 S.Ct. at 614.
The District Court noted, however, that in our instant case the actions of the present defendants-appellees in the 1969 litigation represented “one lawsuit in which they were successful at all levels [where they sought] the enforcement of a statute which had been previously declared Constitutional by the highest court of Kentucky.”
We agree with plaintiff-appellant that summary judgment is rarely an appropriate response to antitrust litigation, since such litigation so frequently turns upon disputed issues of fact. In our instant case, however, we find the following colloquy between one of the counsel for defendantsappellees and Mr. William Hayward Harrison, the President of plaintiff Taylor Drug Stores, Inc., plaintiff-appellant in this cause:
481. Mr. Harrison, was there — do you have any facts or knowledge of any steps taken by any of the defendants in this case to keep you from buying merchandise or keep you from getting, when you wanted it, any merchandise that you had a purchase order outstanding with every one of your suppliers?
A. No.
482. Do you know of any facts to support any claim that any attempt was made to control your sources of supply by the defendants in this case, or any member of the—
A. (Interrupting) I don’t think we have — no such — no such thing ever happened. I don’t think that allegation was ever made or suggested.
483. It is alleged in the Amended Complaint that has been filed on behalf of your company, among other things, that one of the bad things our defendants are accused of doing is conspiring to restrain you by — your company and others — including co-conspirators — from competing with the defendants and requiring them to adhere to the trade practices which the defendants desire to impose on the marketing areas in which they operate.
Now, other than seeking to enforce the Sunday closing laws, do you have any knowledge of any facts to support any claim that any of the defendants got together, or individually, and attempted to impose upon your company any trade practices that they wanted your company to follow?
A. Other than Sunday closing; no.
Further, plaintiff-appellant has had over a year of discovery and at oral argument of this case, counsel for plaintiff-appellant was unable to point out to this court a single issue which we were able to recognize as an issue of fact (as opposed to an issue of law) which would be available for trial if we were to vacate the summary judgment and remand for trial.
We find ourselves in agreement with the District Court that defendants-appellees’ Jefferson County Circuit Court suit commenced in 1969 against plaintiff-appellant in this cause was not a sham. They had a constitutional right of access to the state courts to enforce a state law which had previously been upheld by the highest court of the state. The record clearly discloses that they prevailed in that litigation in the state trial court and that that judgment was never overturned on appeal. This was the only suit initiated by defendants-appellees then or later against plaintiff-appellant Taylor Drug Stores, Inc. For these reasons and for the detailed reasons set forth in Judge Allen’s memorandum opinions, dated March 24,1974 and January 23, 1976, we affirm the summary judgment entered in this case. This case is clearly distinguishable from California Motor Transport Co. v. Tracking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508,92 S.Ct. 609,30 L.Ed.2d 642 (1972). Defendants-appellees’ 1969 Jefferson County Circuit Court suit against Taylor Drug Stores, Inc., was concededly designed to eliminate Taylor Drug’s Sunday competition. But such recourse to the courts to enforce a lawful statute was also within their rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as those rights have been described in Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127, 81 S.Ct. 523, 5 L.Ed.2d 464 (1961), and United Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657, 85 S.Ct. 1585, 14 L.Ed.2d 626 (1965).
The judgment of the District Court is affirmed.
. Count I of the complaint had previously been dismissed and is not at issue in this appeal.

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