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 "groups and associations". 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:
TERMINAL R. ASS’N OF ST. LOUIS v. MOORE, Judge.
No. 12974.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Oct. 19, 1944.
Arnot L. Sheppard, Louis A. McKeown, and Joseph A. McClain, Jr., all of St. Louis, Mo., for petitioner.
■ William H. DeParcq and Robt. J. McDonald, both of Minneapolis, Minn., Harvey B. Cox, of Washington, D. C., and C. A. Randolph, of Kansas City, Mo., for respondent.
Before STONE, Circuit Judge, and REEVES, District Judge.
PER CURIAM.
A personal injury action by A. T. Schorb against Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis is pending in the Eastern District of Missouri. Therein, plaintiff moved for “Discovery and Production of Document and for Permission to Copy Same,” describing the desired matter as “any statement or statements given by plaintiff to any claim agent or other employee of defendant, whether it shall be a statement signed by plaintiff or a statement taken stenographic-ally in question and answer form and not signed by plaintiff, or both.” The motion was sustained in an order requiring production of and permission to make copies of “Any statement or statements concerning an accident which occurred in the yard of Defendant at East St. Louis, Illinois, at about the hour of 10:28 A.M. on September 11th, 1943, wherein Plaintiff was injured, given by Plaintiff to any Claim Agent or other employee of Defendant, whether it be a statement signed by Plaintiff or a statement taken stenographically in question and answer form and not signed by Plaintiff, or both; and also any written document of any kind in Defendant’s possession which purports to be Plaintiff’s statement or account of the occurrence of the aforesaid accident, or any statement made by Plaintiff of any of the facts pertaining to the cause or occurrence of said accident or the injuries sustained as a result of said accident, whether said statement or statements be signed or unsigned by Plaintiff and in whatsoever form be made”.
Thereupon, the Terminal filed in this Court a petition for the writ of prohibition challenging the above order. Since the trial day of the personal injury action is set for less than a week away, the parties have agreed to proceed informally in order not to postpone the trial and the Court has, under the circumstances, accommodated itself to the situation. The parties submit the matter on the petition for the writ and its attached exhibits which are the motion, a supporting affidavit and the order thereon. Counsel have ably presented their views orally and by memoranda of authorities handed to the Court.
Obviously, the motion and order thereon are controlled by Rule 34(1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, which empowers the trial court to “order any party to produce and permit the inspection and copying or photographing, by or on behalf of the moving party, of any designated documents, papers, books, accounts, letters, photographs, objects, or tangible things, not privileged, which constitute or contain evidence material to any matter involved in the action and which are in his possession, custody, or control.”
The issues before us have to do with the jurisdiction of this Court to accord the remedy of prohibition in this situation; and, if such jurisdiction exists, the propriety of its exercise here. Speaking generally, these issues depend upon principles of importance in practice and procedure. They merit a full consideration of the powers of this Court in this respect and of the scope of Rule 34. However, the pressure of the imminence of the trial of the personal injury action precludes any such full consideration and we confine our determination as narrowly as possible to dispose of the case before us.
We refrain expressly from determining the jurisdiction of this Court to control, by prohibition, the action of a trial court taken under Rule 34, although that jurisdiction is by no means free from doubt, yet we assume its existence purely for the purposes of early disposition of this case because we are clearly of the opinion that the writ should not, for other reasons, issue.
The motion and order are narrowly confined to statements made by the plaintiff in the injury suit, concerning the accident or his injuries, to any employee of the defendant therein. Clearly such statements are not privileged. Whether such statements “constitute or contain evidence material to any matter involved in the action” depends upon the character of the statements and the use sought to be made of them at the trial of the injury action. The most which can be properly said against the order — and we do not intimate such — is that it is of doubtful propriety; or, expressing the thought otherwise, that the jurisdiction to enter it is doubtful. Even where there is clear jurisdiction in the appellate court to issue the writ of prohibition, it will not issue if “the jurisdiction of the lower court is doubtful.” Ex parte Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co., 255 U.S. 273, 275, 279, 41 S.Ct. 288, 289, 65 L.Ed. 631; Ex parte Muir, 254 U.S. 522, 534, 41 S.Ct. 85, 65 L.Ed. 383; Ex parte Hussein Lutfi Bey, 256 U.S. 616, 619, 41 S.Ct. 609, 65 L.Ed. 1122; Ex parte United States, 263 U.S. 389, 393, 44 S.Ct. 130, 68 L.Ed. 351.
The writ is denied and the petition therefor dismissed.
Keaton v. Kennamer, 10 Cir., 42 F.2d 814, 815, 816.
Where there is doubt as to the propriety of issuing the writ, “it is admissible, and is common practice, to pass the question of power and to deny the writ because without warrant in other respects”. Ex parte Bakelite Corporation, 279 U.S. 438, 448, 49 S.Ct. 411, 412, 73 L.Ed. 789.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1