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:
DAVID L. SKINNER & CO., Inc., et al. v. HITCHCOCK et al.
No. 2832.
Circuit Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Sept. 15, 1933.
MORTON, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
C. Harold Baldwin and Spaulding, Baldwin & Shaw, all of Boston, Mass., for appellants.
William Harold Hitchcock, of Boston, Mass., for appellees.
Before BINGHAM, WILSON, and MORTON, Circuit Judges.
WILSON, Circuit Judge.
This ease originally came before this court on a petition for leave to appeal. While no transcript of the record in the District Court was filed with the petition, the facts on which the alleged erroneous ruling of the District Court was made are simple, and at the time of the hearing on the petition for leave to appeal were orally stated to this court by the parties. The petition for appeal was allowed and opportunity given the petitioner to file a transcript of the record in the District Court, and ten days given to each party in which to file briefs after the filing of the transcript with the clerk of this court.
This has been done. No new facts other than those agreed upon by the parties at the time of the hearing on the petition, or any new authorities cited in the briefs filed within the ten-day period in addition to those cited in the brief filed by the receivers in opposition to the granting of the petition, appear.
It now appears from the record that the only issues of fact raised by the answers to the petition in bankruptcy are: Whether an act of bankruptcy was committed by the appointment of a receiver in the state courts for the Nantasket Steamboat Company because of its insolvency; whether it was insolvent on the date of the filing of the petition in bankruptcy; and whether two of the three petitioning creditors participated in the state receivership proceedings to the extent of estopping them from joining in such petition.
Of course, no facts bearing on these issues are found in the record. Neither do any grounds appear therein on which the motion for postponement of the hearing was based.
The single issue of law raised by the assignment of errors is whether an order of the District Court continuing the hearing on the issues raised on the petition in bankruptcy and answers thereto filed June 12, 1933, until after September 15, 1933, without fixing any definite date for such hearing, is in compliance with section 18d of the Bankruptcy Act (11 USCA § 41 (d), which requires the issue thus raised to be determined “as soon as may be.”
The order of the District Court, which is the basis of the appeal, issued on motion of the appellees that the hearing on the issued thus raised “be continued until on or about September 15,1933,” and against the protest of the appellants, is as follows:
“Upon the foregoing motion, after hearing William Harold Hitchcock, petitioner, and C. Harold Baldwin of counsel for the petitioning creditors,
“It is ordered that hearing be continued until after September 15,1933.”
It may be that, by the time this opinion is filed, the question raised by the assignment of errors will have become of little concern to the parties to the cause, but an interpretation of section 18d of the act is essential for the future guidance of both court and counsel.
It is undoubtedly true that some discretion is permitted the District Court under section 18d of the act in fixing the time of hearing on the issues raised by a petition in bankruptcy and answer thereto, yet it is perfectly clear that Congress intended by the provisions of the act to have the issue of bankruptcy determined at an early date. The reasons therefor are so plain as not even to require a statement thereof.
While this court cannot control a proper exercise of judicial discretion by the District Court in such cases, it is of the opinion that the postponement of such hearing to an indefinite date more than three months after the filing of an answer is a clear abuse of the discretion vested in the District Court under the section above referred to. Adams v. Foster, 5 Cush. (Mass.) 156; Bentley v. Ward, 116 Mass. 333; Silverstein v. Daniel Russell Boiler Works, Inc., 254 Mass. 137, 149, 149 N. E. 795.
To approve of such an order would, in effect, defeat the obvious purpose of section 18d of the act.
The order of the District Court is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

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: 99