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 "natural persons". 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:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Albert Lonzo CANTRELL, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 78-1750.
United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.
Argued Sept. 13, 1979.
Decided Jan. 7, 1980.
Bruce C. Houdek of James, Odegard, Mil-lert & Houdek, Kansas City, Mo., for defendant-appellant.
John Oliver Martin, Asst. U. S. Atty. (with James P. Buchele, U. S. Atty., Topeka, Kan., on brief), Kansas City, Kan., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before McWILLIAMS, BARRETT and McKAY, Circuit Judges.
McKAY, Circuit Judge.
This case involves two loads of firearms sold to a government “sting” operation. Cantrell and a cohort were indicted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(i) for transporting each of the loads from Missouri to Kansas on September 19 and 20, 1977. Cantrell, a previously convicted felon, was also indicted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(h) for “receiving” the same firearms in Kansas on the same dates. He was convicted and sentenced to consecutive terms of imprisonment for the four counts. The government’s apparent theory and actual proof was that the defendants stole the weapons in Missouri and transported them to Kansas for sale to the sting operation. Cantrell challenged the obvious inconsistency between the indictments for transportation from Missouri into Kansas and receipt of those same weapons in Kansas. There is no doubt that the government’s proof supports its theory that the guns were stolen by the defendants in Missouri and transported into Kansas. The problem arises from the government attempt to sustain the convictions and sentences for receiving the guns in Kansas.
In order retroactively to support these apparently inconsistent convictions, the government imaginatively refashions the English language. It suggests that “receipt” is a continuous act under 18 U.S.C. § 922(h) and that Cantrell therefore “received” the weapons at all times that he possessed them — from Missouri to Kansas. To bolster its contention that receipt and possession are synonymous the government quotes from one of the congressional committee reports for the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968. As quoted by the government, the passage reads:
The principal purposes of title IV [of which 18 U.S.C. § 922(h) is a part] are to aid in making it possible to keep firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background or incompetency . . . . S.Rep.No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., reprinted in [1968] U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 2112, 2113.
Brief for Appellee at 12 (emphasis added by appellee). Rather than accepting a common sense interpretation of this passage — that by making particular acts like “receipt” criminal, Congress intended to deter the ultimate act, possession — the government contends in effect that ultimate statutory purpose should blur precise statutory language: “Clearly, § 922(h) was not designed to discourage the momentary offense of receiving, but rather the continuing offense of receiving or of possession.” Brief for Appellee at 12. Taken one step further, the government’s argument would in effect lead to the absurd conclusion that §§ 922(h) and 922(i), because of their common purpose, are indistinguishable. Under this analysis, we would be left with a double conviction for the same “continuing offense of receiving or of possession,” a result we could not countenance.
In another attempt to sustain its position, the government argues that the jury could have found that Cantrell “re-received” the weapons in Kansas after having transported them there. Since the weapons remained in the trunk of the co-defendant’s car and the co-defendant picked up Cantrell on the way to the sting operation, the government suggests that Cantrell “temporarily lost possession” and later regained it. Brief for Appellee at 9-10. We believe that no jury would formulate such a bizarre theory and, as a matter of law, no jury should be permitted to attach such a meaning to “receipt.” Under neither common sense nor the law do we “receive” our possessions anew each time we come upon them.
The government suggests a final theory to salvage the apparently inconsistent counts of the indictment. It argues that evidence of receipt in Missouri satisfies the indictment for receipt in Kansas and that this case involves a mere harmless variance between indictment and proof. If Cantrell had been charged with receipt only, the variance in the place of the offense would perhaps have been harmless. See United States v. Frazier, 545 F.2d 71 (8th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1078, 97 S.Ct. 823, 50 L.Ed.2d 798 (1977). However, when a defendant is charged with apparently inconsistent counts in a single indictment and the government removes the inconsistency only at trial, if at all, we cannot say that the defendant “could . . . have anticipated what the evidence would be at trial.” Brief for Appellee at 10, citing United States v. Freeman, 514 F.2d 1184 (10th Cir. 1975). The government has succeeded in sustaining consecutive sentences for unlawful transportation. We cannot say that the unfairness involved in the substantial variance between the indictment on the one hand and the government’s theory on the other hand is sufficiently harmless to sustain the addition of two more lengthy terms in sequence.
The conviction is affirmed as to counts one and three (interstate transportation) and reversed as to counts two and four (receipt).
. Section 922(i) reads: “It shall be unlawful for any person to transport or ship in interstate or foreign commerce, any stolen firearm or stolen ammunition, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the firearm or ammunition was stolen.”
. In pertinent part, § 922(h) reads: “It shall be unlawful for any person . . who is under indictment for, or who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year . to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1