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:
UNITED STATES, for Use of BIRMINGHAM SLAG CO., v. PERRY et al.
No. 9473.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Nov. 29, 1940.
William Marvin Woodall, of Birmingham, Ala., for appellant.
H. H. Grooms, of Birmingham, Ala., for appellees.
Before HUTCHESON, HOLMES, and McCORD, Circuit Judges.
HOLMES, Circuit Judge.
To decide this case, we must determine whether under Section 2 of the Miller Act, 49 Stat. 794, 40 U.S.C.A. § 270b, actual notice to a contractor that his subcontractor has failed to pay a claim for material furnished, when given by ordinary mail and not by registered mail, is sufficient to vest in the materialman a right of action on the contractor’s payment bond.
The question arose in this way: On June 30, 1938, the United States, acting through the Farm Security Administration, entered into a written contract with W. J. Perry, a general contractor, for certain construction work on the Cahaba Project in Alabama. Perry furnished a payment bond in standard government form, as required by the Miller Act, with the United State Fidelity and Guaranty Company as surety. Perry sublet a part of the work to P. E. Kidder, a subcontractor approved by the Farm Security Administration. The Birmingham Slag Company furnished Kidder with building materials used on the work, in the amount of $4,344.25, completing the delivery on September 28, 1938.
The work was completed on October 18, 1938, on which date Perry paid Kidder all that was due him under the subcontract. Kidder did not pay the Birmingham Slag Company for the materials furnished, and, on December 1, 1938, the company dispatched a letter by ordinary mail to the Farm Security Administration stating that it had an unpaid account against Kidder, and inquiring whether the work had been completed and Kidder paid. The Farm Security Administration thereupon sent a letter by ordinary mail to Perry, on December 10, 1938, advising him that the balance of the contract price due him could not be paid until the materialman’s claim was paid, and inclosing to him a copy of the letter received by the Administration from the Birmingham Slag Company.
The district court found as a fact that Perry had actual notice of the material-man’s claim through the letter from the Farm Security Administration, but reached the conclusion that such notice, being by ordinary mail, did not vest a right of action' on the bond in the materialman; that the statute conferring the right of action specified only two ways in which notice might be given: by registered mail, or in any manner by which the United States Marshal of the district might serve a summons; that these requirements of the statute were not merely directory, but were-mandatory; and that the service of notice in one of the two specified ways was a condition precedent to a right of action on the bond. The court, therefore, concluded as a matter of law that appellant had no right of action against Perry and his surety, from which ruling this appeal is brought.
Since no« contractual relationship existed between the Slag Company and the contractor, it is clear that it has no right of action against him and his surety as a matter of common right. If such right of action exists, it must be by virtue of special statutory authorization. Section 2 of the Miller Act, supra, vests a right of action upon the contractor’s payment bond in materialmen who deal only with a subcontractor under governmental contracts for public improvements, provided the contractor is given written notice within a limited time. And “such notice shall be served by mailing the same by registered mail, postáge prepaid, in an envelope addressed to the contractor at any place he maintains an office or conducts his business, or his residence, or in any manner in which the United States Marshal of the district in which the public improvement is situated is authorized by law to serve summons.” Under this statute, is actual notice by ordinary mail sufficient ?
This precise question was answered affirmatively by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, *and negatively by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The Supreme Court, in view of the conflict evidenced by these decisions, granted certiorari to the Second Circuit, and, on November 12, 1940, handed down its decision. Fleisher Engineering & Construction Co. et al. v. United States, 61 S.Ct. 81, 85 L.Ed. - — . That case presented the same issues as those here in controversy. The court held that the purpose of the statutory provision relative to registered mail was to assure receipt of the notice, and not to make the prescribed method mandatory so as to deny right of suit when the required written notice within the specified time had actually been given and received.
The notice in this case was sufficient to vest in the materialman a right of action on the payment bond, and the action of the district court dismissing the complaint was improper. Its judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
United States v. Fleisher Engineering & Construction Co., 107 F.2d 925.
United States v. Rass, 111 F.2d 965.

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