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:
Claude CUNNINGHAM, Appellee, v. M-G TRANSPORT SERVICES, INC., Appellant.
No. 74-1757.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued August 19, 1975.
Decided Nov. 4, 1975.
George S. Sharp, Charleston, W. Va., for appellant.
Thomas P. Maroney, Charleston, W. Va., for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Circuit Judge, and WINTER and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
In this suit for injury to a seaman, the district court quite correctly submitted special interrogatories to the jury to facilitate separate determination of two theories of liability, negligence and unseaworthiness. They were put in the form of affirmative statements, and read as follows:
We, the Jury, find for the plaintiff, Claude Cunningham, on the basis of negligence [unseaworthiness] as stated in Count I of the complaint and assess damages at $_to be recovered by the plaintiff from the defendant, M-G Transport Services, Inc.
It is the better practice to frame such issues in question form, but the statement form is not plain error where the judge plainly instructs the jury that they will not return the statement as a verdict unless they find the defendant guilty of the charged misconduct.
The jury filled in the blank in the negligence statement in the amount of $10,000 and then proceeded to fill in the blank in the unseaworthiness statement in the amount of $6,700. It is impossible to determine what is meant by the verdicts as to damages. Plaintiff is entitled to recover on either theory, but he is not entitled to recover on both theories. The district court should have submitted special interrogatories substantially as follows:
1. Was the plaintiff, Claude Cunningham, injured by the negligence of the defendant, M-G Transport Services, Inc., as alleged in the complaint?
Answer Yes or No: -—
2. Was the plaintiff, Claude Cunningham, injured by the unseaworthiness of defendant’s vessel as alleged in the complaint?
Answer Yes or No: -
3. What amount, if any, is the plaintiff, Claude Cunningham, entitled to recover of the defendant, M-G Transport Services, Inc.?
$_•
We strongly recommend to the district judges within the circuit that when special interrogatories are utilized they be put in the form of questions, and that always the questions of damages be separated from the questions of liability.
We affirm the judgment below with respect to the liability of M-G Transport Services, Inc. to the plaintiff, and reverse and remand for a new trial restricted to the question of damage.
Affirmed in part; reversed in part; remanded.
. The drafting of special interrogatories is largely a matter of common sense and local practice, for example, proximate causation might be submitted as a separate issue if thought appropriate. They may be as detailed as counsel and the district court wish to make them, and the particular verbiage used is of no great consequence so long as the questions are framed so that the jury knows what it is deciding.

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