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:
GILCHRIST-FORDNEY CO. v. WELCH DRY KILN CO.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
June 19, 1929.
No. 5506.
Stone Deavours and Henry Hilbun, both of Laurel, Miss., and Vernon E. Hodges, of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
Dean S. Edmonds and Merton W. Sage, both of New York City, and E. J. Ford, of Pascagoula, Miss., for appellee.
Before WALKER, BRYAN, and FOSTER, Circuit Judges.
Rehearing denied August 10, 1929. Appellant’s 19, 1929. motion to reopen and remand case denied August
FOSTER, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from an interlocutory decree holding patent No. 1,517,928, issued to John B. Welch, December 2, 1924, for improvements in kilns for drying lumber, to be valid and infringed.
The record supports the following conclusions as to the material facts. After sawing, green lumber must be dried before using it. One method of drying is by the use of what are known as progressive kilns. These kilns are buildings varying in length from 100 to 150 feet, approximately 20 feet wide by 10 feet in height, and capable of being made practically air tight. Green lumber is ran on tracks, traveling on traeks, into the kilns. A track load of freshly sawed lumber is put in one end, called the green end, allowed to stay in that end for a day, and then pushed forward daily, another track load of lumber taking its place, until it finally emerges from the other end of the kiln, called the dry end. These kilns are heated, usually by steam pipes, and the process of drying usually consumes about seven days for pine lumber.
Green lumber contains a high percentage of moisture, and in the drying process will necessarily shrink. If the surface is dried too rapidly, leaving the interior portions of the lumber still wet, the shrinkage will have a tendency to crack and cheek the lumber, greatly reducing its merchantable value.
In the kiln-drying of lumber there are three essential factors, heat, humidity of the air, and circulation. It is necessary to have at the green end of the kiln high humidity, low temperature, and sluggish circulation, and at the dry end low humidity and high temperature. Longitudinal circulation is desirable, as transverse circulation tends to maintain the same temperature throughout the kiln. The ideal condition of drying in progressive kilns is to have the track load of lumber enter a new air pocket each day, in which the humidity will he decreased and the heat increased progressively in just the right proportion. Before Welch’s invention, this was sought to be accomplished by having more steam pipes and greater heat at the dry end, but results were not uniform. The improvement covered by the Welch patent consists principally of a by-pass conduit running from the green end along the bottom of the kiln and connected with a fresh air intake at the green end. Its function is to increase and improve longitudinal circulation. To accelerate the circulation, steam jets of small diameter are placed about midway of the kiln.
We entertain no doubt as to the validity of appellee’s patent. The use of by-pass conduits and steam jets to improve circulation was unknown in the prior art, and their addition to progressive kilns constituted a new and -useful improvement, greatly improving the process of drying lumber in such kilns and increasing the value of the finished product.
Appellant’s device consists of an air conduit running through the kiln for a certain distance and the addition of steam jets to accelerate the circulation. The only difference between this and the patented device is that instead of connecting directly with a fresh air intake appellant’s air conduit is connected with a chamber created by constructing a wall across the green end of the kiln about three feet from its end and below the rail line. The fresh air intake of the Welch device is omitted, but the construction of the doors of the kiln, together with the spaces necessarily allowed through the doors for the rails on which the trucks of lumber move, supply sufficient fresh air to the eqnduit. It is apparent that appellant’s device is substantially the same as that covered by plaintiff’s patent and constitutes an infringement.
The judgment appealed from 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