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, Appellee, v. Rudolph A. TROPEANO, Defendant, Appellant.
No. 72-1337.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Argued March 6, 1973.
Decided April 10, 1973.
Lawrence F. O’Donnell, Boston, Mass., with whom Francis X. Aylward, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellant.
Michael J. Madigan, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom James N. Gabriel, U. S. Atty., was on brief, for appellee.
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, ALD-RICH and McENTEE, Circuit Judges.
ALDRICH, Senior Judge.
Defendant, a government meat inspector, convicted of violations of 21 U.S.C. § 622 (“Bribery of or gifts to inspectors or other officers and acceptance of gifts”) by the receipt of money and meat products, from a processor, lists fifteen points on his appeal. A number are answered by our recent decision in United States v. Seuss, 1 Cir., 1973, 474 F.2d 385. A larger number need no discussion, either because they do not possibly involve plain error, or because they do not possibly involve error of any sort. Two matters remain.
Defendant’s trial took place after the conviction of some other defendants on similar charges. After testimony had started, defendant’s counsel learned that some of the jurors had sat in a previous case. Defendant moved for a mistrial. The court denied the motion, on the ground that the objection came too late and because the jurors were not disqualified as a matter of law.
The second portion of this ruling was clearly correct. United States v. Ragland, 2 Cir., 1967, 375 F.2d 471, cert. denied 390 U.S. 925, 88 S.Ct. 860, 19 L. Ed.2d 987, and cases cited at 476 n. 2. On the record, the first was, also. Defendant knew there had been previous trials. Although it would have been a simple matter to request the court to inquire of prospective jurors at the time of impanelling whether they had sat before, defendant did not do so. Had he done so the court should probably have regarded the disclosure as a ground for challenge for cause. Indeed, defendant had not even consumed his peremptory challenges.
Defendant’s counsel offers as excuse a conversation with a deputy clerk which led him to believe he was going to get “fresh” jurors. This circumstance does not appear of record with any clarity. Even if we were to assume it did, it would not constitute an adequate excuse. A trial is a serious matter. It is not within the scope of the duties of a deputy clerk to supply such information. The clerk’s office is often helpful and, from experience, parties may find the advice of a clerk on all sorts of matters to be valuable. Counsel must, however, take their own chances on such informal instruction, particularly in a situation like the present, where first hand information and the ability to protect oneself is readily available. The government is rarely if ever estopped by a statement of an official outside his authority. Cf. United States v. Rossi, 9 Cir., 1965, 342 F.2d 505.
If the rule were otherwise, courts would be obliged to forbid their clerks to have any contact with counsel except in the rigid performance of their statutory duties. The bar would be the first to object to such a rule. The alternative is that counsel must make their own decision whether to trust such informal information, or, as we have sometimes found the problem to be, and would seem here, to trust their own understanding of what the clerk may have said. In this case, if in fact counsel correctly understood the clerk and the clerk was mistaken, it is the defendant who properly must bear the consequences. In fact, in much clearer cases, as where the clerk’s office fails to send out a notice, the loss falls on the party who relied on the clerk’s office instead of checking the record. See, e. g., Buckley v. United States, 10 Cir., 1967, 382 F.2d 611, cert. denied 390 U.S. 997, 88 S.Ct. 1202, 20 L.Ed.2d 97.
Secondly, defendant complains that the prosecutor violated the rule forbidding his stating in argument his personal belief in defendant’s guilt. The now objected-to statement was as follows.
“Do you recall that I said in my opening statement perhaps improperly, it is not a very nice story, because I believe that is true, it is not a very nice story. It is a story that happened.”
We consider that a listener would take the first part of this statement as the prosecutor’s concurrence in the sorry nature of the tale told by the government’s witnesses. It would have been better had he made the second sentence less direct: “I ask you to find that it happened.” “I submit that it happened.” “The government witnesses were clear in their testimony . . .” etc. But while we regret the form, we do not find it so positive that we must reverse. Nonetheless, the lesson to the prosecutor should be obvious; “I believe” is a dirty verb.
Affirmed.
. All that appears is that counsel informed the clerk that he wanted a fresh jury. It does not appear now, nor was the claim made to the district court, that the clerk informed him that, without more, he was going to get one.
. We cannot forbear remarking, from viewing the record, that the same sauce should be applied to the gander.

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