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 of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Harold Hardin DAVIS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 77-5208.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Argued Dec. 14, 1977.
Decided Jan. 20, 1978.
Carl McDonald, Goddard & Gamble (Court Appointed — CJA) Maryville, Tenn., for defendant-appellant.
John L. Bowers, Jr., U. S. Atty., Edward E. Wilson, Asst. U. S. Atty., Knoxville, Tenn., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before LIVELY, ENGEL and MERRITT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
The question in this case is whether the government proved by competent évidence that two vehicles found in the possession of the defendant were stolen and had moved in interstate commerce. We conclude that no such proof was presented, and accordingly, we reverse.
The defendant was convicted of receiving and concealing a 1972 GMC tractor (a unit used to pull trailers) and a 1974 John Deere front loader with high-lift attachment, both of which were claimed to have been stolen and moved in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2313. The defendant had possession of both vehicles in Tennessee when he was indicted, and maintained that he had purchased them some months earlier.
The first witness for the government at defendant’s trial was Robert Kittle, Jr., who testified that he owned a 1972 GMC tractor and a John Deere loader and that this equipment had disappeared from a job site in Georgia along with a 15-ton lowboy. Mr. Kittle testified that he reported the disappearance of the equipment to the local police. He was not asked to describe the equipment or to identify it by registration numbers or otherwise. On cross-examination he testified that his vehicles had not been returned to him and he had not seen them.
The FBI agent who located the vehicles on the premises of the defendant and his father testified that the number which he located on the truck [tractor] was the sanie number of the vehicle that was reported stolen. He also stated that the loader contained an engine number which was the same as that on the front-end-loader reported stolen by Mr. Kittle. The witness testified that these determinations were made from the fact that he received a “hit” upon running the numbers through the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The defendant objected to both statements on the ground that “What the NCIC told Mr. Roberts [the FBI agent] is hearsay.” The objections were overruled.
The defendant moved for acquittal at the close of the government’s case on the ground that the prosecution had failed to tie Kittle’s loss to the equipment found in the defendant’s possession. This motion was renewed after all the evidence was in.
An NCIC identification of a vehicle is sufficient to establish probable cause for the arrest of one possessing it, United States v. Smith, 461 F.2d 246 (10th Cir. 1972), and it is admissible to corroborate the true owner’s testimony concerning a theft. United States v. Hines, 564 F.2d 925 (10th Cir. 1977). The present NCIC report would have been admissible to show that two vehicles had been reported stolen, a fact to which Mr. Kittle testified. See United States v. Graham, 391 F.2d 439, 448 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 1035, 88 S.Ct. 1433, 20 L.Ed.2d 294 and 393 U.S. 941, 89 S.Ct. 307, 21 L.Ed.2d 278 (1968). However, since the purported owner did not identify the vehicles by reference to the registration and engine numbers, the agent’s conclusion that the vehicles possessed by the defendant were the same ones which Kittle had reported stolen was based on inadmissible hearsay. United States v. Johnson, 413 F.2d 1396, 1398 (5th Cir. 1969). With this testimony excluded there was no evidence that the vehicles found in Tennessee were in fact the ones which disappeared from the job site in Georgia.
There is no explanation in the record for the government’s failure to identify the stolen vehicles through the testimony of the owner. Since the government had the witness available who possessed the information required to identify the vehicles, and chose not to produce this essential evidence, we see no reason to remand for a new trial.
The judgment of the district court is reversed with directions to dismiss the indictment.

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: 0