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:
M & M TRANSP. CO. v. CITY OF NEW YORK.
No. 117, Docket 21833.
United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.
Argued Dec. 5, 1950.
Decided Dec. 26, 1950.
Zelby & Burstein, New York City, Herbert Burstein, New York City, for appellant.
John P. McGrath, Corporation Counsel, New York City, Bernard Sherris, New York City (Stanley Buchsbaum, New York. City, of counsel), for appellees.
Before L. HAND, Chief Judge, and. SWAN and CHASE, Circuit Judges.
L. HAND, Chief Judge.
The plaintiff sued the City of New York to enjoin the collection of taxes, which it alleged had been unlawfully levied; the City moved for a summary judgment dismissing the complaint; the judge dismissed the complaint on the merits, and the plaintiff has appealed. It is a foreign corporation, a common carrier doing a trucking business between Boston and New York^ but no part of the business consists of carrying between points within the State of New York. It alleges that the taxes in question were unconstitutional because they were laid upon interstate commerce; but we do not find it necessary to pass upon that question, for we think that the district court did not have jurisdiction over the action, because “the matter in controversy” did not exceed, “exclusive of interest and costs,” “the sum or value of $3,000.” In 1934 the State of New York passed a statute allowing cities of over one million inhabitants to levy taxes upon the gross income of non-resident corporations; and, acting upon this power, the City imposed such a tax upon carriers, assessed, however, by a measure not disclosed in the record. In 1938 and thereafter the City changed this to a tax upon a proportion of the plaintiff’s gross income, ascertained by formulas not here important; and in accordance with these two municipal laws the City Comptroller levied upon the plaintiff an annual tax of $100 for each year from 1934 to 1948 both inclusive. These taxes, with a penalty of $5 for each year, have created a claim of $1,575, no part of which the plaintiff has paid, and whose collection this action has been brought to enjoin. The defendant argues that the value of “the matter in controversy” is only the aggregate of the sums hitherto levied, together with the penalties — interest being concededly not includable — ; the plaintiff argues that it is the value of the property on which the tax has been levied: i. e. “the value of the right to carry on an interstate business.”
The first time at which the point appears to have been bruited in the Supreme Court was in 1862 in Mississippi & Missouri R. R. Co. v. Ward, a suit in equity to compel the removal of a bridge which interfered with the plaintiff’s navigation of the Mississippi River. In no more than a passing mention the Court held that “the removal of the obstruction is the matter of controversy, and the value of the object must govern.” That was at best ambiguous; indeed, it apparently meant that the value of the bridge, or at least of so much of it as the plaintiff wished to have removed, was the test. However that may have been, the value of “the matter in controversy” was construed to mean the value of “the object to be gained by ■complainant” ; and in the case of taxes, or of license fees, it is now settled that it is the value of the taxes or of the fees, which the plaintiff will be obliged to pay, if they are valid. When the charges are recurrent and may be levied or imposed in the future, it is not, however, settled whether the plaintiff may add to the sum of the taxes or fees already due a sum equal to the commuted value of all future taxes and fees. The furthest that any courts have gone in somewhat similar situations has been in Food Fair Stores v. Food Fair, and in Pure Oil Co. v. Puritan Oil Co. In the language of Judge Woodbury in the first of these, a finding “cannot be based upon a mere possibility of future harm, but it can he upon a present probability of such harm.” In the case at bar we are relieved from deciding whether such a factor may be added, because under the evidence no finding of the necessary commuted value could at best be more than “possible.” We will assume that, when the action was brought in May or June, 1950, the tax for 1949 had been levied and had not been paid, so that we will begin by adding $105 to $1,575, making $1,680 of the necessary $3,000, and leaving only $1,320 to be assigned by hypothesis as the commuted value of the future taxes. However, even at an interest rate of three per cent sixteen future annual payments of $100 each would not equal $1,320; and nobody could even make a plausible guess whether the tax will still be levied and the plaintiff will still be in the business sixteen years from now.
Judgment reversed; complaint dismissed for lack of jurisdiction in the district court.
. § 1331, Title 28 U.S.C.A.
. Chapter 873, Daws of 1934, Ex.Sess.
. 2 Black, 485, 492,17 L.Ed. 311.
. Glenwood Light & Water Co. v. Mutual Light, Heat & Power Co., 239 U.S. 121, 125, 36 S.Ct. 30, 32, 60 L.Ed. 174.
. Healy v. Ratta, 292 U.S. 263, 54 S.Ct. 700, 78 L.Ed. 1248; Cook’s Estate v. Sheppard, D.C., 8 F.Supp. 21, affirmed Barwise v. Sheppard, 293 U.S. 527, 55 S.Ct. 145, 79 L.Ed. 637; McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 298 U.S. 178, 56 S.Ct. 780, 80 L.Ed. 1135; Connor v. Rivers, D.C., 25 F.Supp. 937, affirmed 305 U.S. 576, 59 S.Ct. 359, 83 L.Ed. 363.
. 1 Cir., 177 F.2d 177,184.
. D.C., 39 F.Supp. 68, 74.

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