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:
WESTERN, Inc., Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
No. 15470.
United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.
June 20, 1956.
Robert J. Gaddy, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant.
Alan S. Rosenthal, Atty., Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. (Geo. S. Leonard, Acting Asst. Atty. Gen., Harry Richards, U. S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., Samuel D. Slade, Atty., Department of Justice, Washington, D. C., were with him on the brief), for appellee.
Before SANBORN, WOODROUGH and JOHNSEN, Circuit Judges.
SANBORN, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from an order allowing the claim of the Government in the amount of $8,491.55 as a priority claim under a Plan of Reorganization confirmed in a proceeding for the reorganization of Western, Inc. (appellant), under Chapter X of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U.S.C. A. § 501 et seq.
Appellant contends that the District Court erred in determining that it had assumed the indebtedness of a predecessor partnership known as Banfield Packing Company of Miami, Oklahoma. If there was an adequate evidentiary basis for that determination, the order appealed from must be affirmed, since it is undisputed that the partnership was liable to the Government for subsidy over-payments made to the partnership in 1945 in the amount of $8,491.55.
Originally, Banfield Packing Company of Miami, Oklahoma, commenced business as an Oklahoma corporation organized in January, 1943. It was engaged in the meat packing business at Miami, Oklahoma. In August, 1943, it transferred all of its assets and business to a partnership, of the same name, composed of the stockholders of the corporation with one addition. The partnership continued the same meat packing business at Miami, Oklahoma, from August, 1943, until January 1, 1946, when it transferred its assets and business back to the Banfield Packing Company of Miami,- Oklahoma, a corporation. In December, 1948, the stockholders of the corporation, who had been the partners while the business was conducted as a partnership,- sold their stock to Harry C. Bass, Jr. For a short time thereafter the corporation continued the business under its original name. On July 1,1949, its name was- changed to Western, Inc. On March 17, 1952,- Western, Inc., filed a petition for reorganization in the District Court under Chapter X of the Bankruptcy Act, and on November 28, 1952, the Government filed proof of its claim. The trustee filed objections to the claim.
The issue whether Western, Inc., the debtor corporation, had assumed the indebtedness of the partnership was tried to the court. The contract and bill of sale whereby the Banfield corporation had succeeded to the assets and business of the partnership were not produced, and apparently were unavailable. The Government served a subpoena duces tecum on the Trustee of the debtor, on its President, and on its attorney. Each responded that he was not in possession of the proposal of the Banfield corporation to purchase the assets and business of the partnership or the bill of sale from the partnership to the corporation. There was evidence that on January 1, 1946, at a special meeting of stockholders of the Banfield corporation, five directors were elected, including R. C. Banfield and W. J. Otjen, and that the officers and directors were authorized to purchase the assets of the partnership in accordance with a proposal of the partnership to sell all of its assets to the corporation for $76,675.00 of its capital stock, “this corporation to assume and pay all outstanding obligations of said partnership.”
The Government, in support of its claim, offered in evidence the depositions of Otjen and Banfield, who had been stockholders of the Banfield corporation and members of the predecessor partnership and were present at the stockholders’ meeting of January 1, 1946. Otjen, who was a lawyer, testified, in effect, that the changes from a corporation to a partnership and back to a corporation were purely organizational changes; that the business had been conducted in the same location, in the same way, with the same personnel and same ownership. He testified that he prepared the proposal for the transfer of the assets from the partnership to the corporation and the bill of sale, and that, while he had no copies of them, he knew that by their terms the corporation undertook to assume and pay the liabilities of the partnership. Ban-field’s deposition was corroborative of that of Otjen. The depositions were admitted in evidence over the objections that the documents about which the deponents testified were the best evidence of their contents.
We think that there was competent evidence that the debtor corporation expressly assumed the obligations of the partnership. In fact, we think that the evidence would have justified no other conclusion. There was, we think, ample foundation for the introduction of the deposition of Otjen, who had first-hand knowledge of the facts and circumstances under which the assets and business of the partnership were transferred to the corporation on January 1, 1946. The Government had subpoenaed the production of the proposal and bill of sale from all those who reasonably might be expected to have those documents. The best evidence rule does not require proof of the nonexistence of a document beyond the possibility of mistake, United States v. Sutter, 21 How. 170,175,16 L.Ed. 119, before secondary evidence of its contents is admissible. The rule is not intended as a bar to the ascertainment of truth. The purpose of the rule is to require the production of the best evidence obtainable as to the contents of a document which is shown to be unavailable. The sufficiency of the foundation laid for the admission of secondary evidence rests largely in the discretion of the trial court. Probst v. Trustees of Board of Domestic Missions of General Assembly of Presbyterian Church, 129 U.S. 182, 188, 9 S.Ct. 263, 32 L.Ed. 642. See also, 20 Am.Jur. § 403, page 364, and § 406, pages 366-367.
The findings and conclusions of the District Court were correct.
The order appealed from is affirmed.

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