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:
MA-KING PRODUCTS CO. v. BLAIR, Com’r of Internal Revenue.
(Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
February 9, 1925.)
No. 3254.
Intoxicating liquors <S=69 — Commissioner has discretion in the granting of permits to manufacture.
Prohibition Act, tit. 2, §§ 5, 6 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, §§ 10138%bb, 10138y2c), vests the Commissioner of Internal Revenue with a responsible discretion in the granting of permits to manufacture liquor, and refusal of a permit to a corporation whose managing officers have been associated in business with persons charged with violating the law is proper.
Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Pennsylvania; W. H. Seward Thomson and Erederie P. Sehoonmaker, Judges.
Suit in equity by the Ma-King Products Company against David H. Blair, Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Decree for defendant, and complainant appeals.
Affirmed.
Louis Little, of Pittsburgh, Pa., and B. D. Oliensis and Francis Shunk Brown, both of Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.
Walter Lyon, U. S. Atty., and George V. Moore, Sp. Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Pittsburgh, Pa., for appellee.
Before BUFFINGTON and WOOLLEY, Circuit Judges, and BODINE, District Judge.
BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.
In the court below the Ma-King Products Company, a corporate citizen of New Jersey, filed a bill in equity against David H. Blair, Commissioner of Internal Revenue. It alleged it had duly made application, accompanied by proper bond, to said commissioner for a permit to operate an alcohol denaturing plant; that under the law he was empowered and authorized to grant such permit, but he had “arbitrarily, illegally, and without any reason or warrant in law or in fact” disapproved the application and refused to issue the permit.. The bill prayed the court to revoke the finding and disapproval of the Commissioner, and ordered him to decree that he approve and grant the permit prayed for. Traversing the foregoing allegations of arbitrary and illegal conduct, the Commissioner made answer, and further set forth that he, “as the result of an investigation conducted by respondent’s agents, is informed that Harry J. Bogash and Joseph H. Klutseh, respectively, president and secretary-treasurer of the petitioning company, are not individually, or as officers of said petitioner, entitled to be intrusted with a permit of the nature and kind set forth in said bill of complaint, or any other permit under the provisions of the National Prohibition Act, and that therefore your respondent, upon said information, acted under full warrant of law and fact in disapproving the application of the petitioning company and declining and refusing to issue the permit prayed for by the petitioners.”
Testimony was taken by both sides, and the case heard by Judges Thomson and Schoonmaker, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, who concurred that there was nothing in the record to justify them “in finding that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, in refusing the application of the plaintiff for the permit for the establishment of a denaturing plant, abused the wide discretion vested in him by the act of Congress.” Prom a decree dismissing the bill, this appeal is taken.
After an examination of the proofs in the ease ’vv;e are of the opinion the associations and business connections of Bogash and Klutseh, the principal officers of this company, were such that the Commissioner had ample ground for declining to issue the company the permit. The holder of such a permit is intrusted by the government with a power which subjects him to the approaches and bribes of law-breakers, and where, as in this case, the business associations of applicants iiave been witli men whose eonduct has already invited prohibition prosecutions against them, it goes without saying1 that the Commissioner would have been derelict in duty in granting them a permit.
But the appellants raise the further question that the Commissioner has no discretionary power, but his duty is mandatory to issue a permit. The controlling statutory law is plain. A brief reference to the pertinent parts shows the groundlessness of such contention. Section 6, title 2, of the National Prohibition Act (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 10138%c) provides: “No one shall manufacture, sell, purchase, transport, or prescribe any liquor without first obtaining a permit from the Commissioner so to do,” and “in the event of the refusal by the commissioner of any application for a permit, the applicant may have a review of his decision before a court of equity in the manner provided in section 5 hereof.” That section provides: “The manufacturer may by appropriate proceeding in a court of equity have the action of the Commissioner reviewed, and the court may affirm, modify, or reverse the finding of the Commissioner, as the facts and law of the case may warrant.” Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 10138%bb.
The last phrase, “as the facts and law of the case may warrant,” shows that Congress meant the Commissioner was to have, not the mere mandatory clerical duty of signing a permit, hut the discretionary and responsible one of considering facts and law before he determined whether he would permit manufacture. If issue of the permit were mandatory on the Commissioner, why give the court jurisdiction to “affirm, modify or reverse the finding of the Commissioner as the facts and law of the ease may warrant” ? That the court was empowered to review the “findings of the Commissioner,” and was given power to affirm, modify or reverse such findings, shows that what the Commissioner was to do was not the perfunctory signing of a formal permit, hut the responsible duty of determining whether this high permissive privilege and permit should he issued to an applicant.
So holding, this appeal is dismissed, at appellant’s costs, and, as the act provides for affirmative action by the court, the mandate will direct that there he added to the decree below, dismissing the bill; these words, “and the finding of the Commissioner is affirmed.”

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