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 "natural persons". 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:
HERZOG v. KRONMAN.
No. 6513.
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Argued Jan. 10, 1936.
Decided Feb. 17, 1936.
Mark P. Friedlander and Robert I. Silverman, both of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
M. D. Rosenberg, of Washington, D. C., for appellee.
Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB, VAN ORSDEL, GRONER, and STEPHENS, Associate Justices.
PER CURIAM.
Appellant, whom we shall call plaintiff, brought an action which he calls an action for “slander of title” against appellee, whom we shall call defendant, for seven hundred odd dollars actual damages and twenty-four thousand odd dollars exemplary damages. The facts alleged in the declaration are that plaintiff inherited a certain parcel of land from his father on which there was a debt of $14,000.00, evidenced by a note secured by mortgage on the land; that after his father’s death he qualified as executor, and, during the period of administration, defendant, the holder of the note, filed claim in the probate court of the .District of Columbia, in which he stated he was the owner of the note, that the same had been protested for nonpayment, and that he held no security for same. Plaintiff copied into his declaration the docket entry in the probate court, and this entry showed the name and residence of the claimant, the amount and nature of the claim; and, under the latter heading, that it was a “real estate note” assumed by plaintiff’s father and bore interest at 6 per cent, from a period a little less than a month prior to the docketing. The allegation is that the statement in the claim that the note had been protested and that there was no security for the same was defamatory because the fact was the note was not then due; and, as a result of the filing of the claim — as due and unsecured — “plaintiff was put to great inconvenience and was vexed, harrassed and put to divers and great expenses,” etc.
The actual expenses alleged are the cost for an additional year of the executor’s bond and attorney fees and court costs, but the total is under the jurisdictional amount entitling plaintiff to sue in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia; and nothing of fact is specifically alleged to sustain the claim of exemplary damages. The lower court, in dismissing the action, said that nothing was stated in the declaration which directly or by innuendo disparages title to the property in question.
Admitting that the words used in the claim filed in the probate court were malicious — which, however, we think does not in fact appear — there is nothing to show plaintiff sustained special damages as the natural and proximate consequences thereof; and there is certainly nothing in the docket entry made by the clerk, as the result of the filing of the claim, calculated in the ordinary course to cause damage to the title to the land, special or otherwise. There is no charge that the sale of the property was defeated by the alleged libel, or that the property was in any respect injured as the result of filing of the claim. And we know of no rule of law under which plaintiff could recover exemplary damages, in an action of this nature, without charging and proving that the libel prevented the sale or leasing of the land or otherwise damaged the title.
To maintain the action, slander of title, it must be charged and shown that the words are false and were malicious, and that the damage alleged naturally and reasonably resulted; and, if special damage is alleged, it must be claimed and facts must be alleged on which it may be sustained. That an action in case will lie for recovery of actual damages, if willfully and intentionally caused, will not help plaintiff here, for in that case because of lack of jurisdictional amount the action must have been brought in the municipal court.
Affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0