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:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jack BREWER, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 87-1431.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Dec. 24, 1987.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 28,1988.
David Godbey, Timothy A. Duffy (court appointed), Dallas, Tex., for defendant-appellant.
Sidney Powell, Asst. U.S. Atty., Marvin Collins, U.S. Atty., Dallas, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before GOLDBERG, WILLIAMS, and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.
PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:
A defendant appeals from his conviction for illegally possessing and trafficking in counterfeit long distance telephone service access codes, claiming that the statute under which he was convicted is not applicable to misuse of such codes. We are persuaded that the conduct complained of here falls under a practical reading of the statute and affirm.
I
Texas National Telecommunications is a long distance telephone company. A customer calls TNT’s toll free phone number, punches in a personal access code, and if the access code is determined to be valid by the TNT computer, the customer gets a dial tone enabling him to place a long distance call. The call is then billed to the customer through the access number.
The government urged that Brewer was “hacking” — placing numerous calls to the TNT toll-free number and trying out various number combinations until he found one that the computer would accept as valid. By this process, it was urged, Brewer gathered a number of personal access codes that could be used to make long distance phone calls without identification of the user.
TNT became concerned about a large number of calls being charged to unassigned personal access codes and asked the Secret Service and Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. to investigate. The investigators traced calls placed to the 800 number to three phones — all owned by Brewer. The investigators estimated that Brewer would have thirty access codes at that time, and they cancelled all but five of them. Secret Service Agent Rico contacted Brewer and asked to purchase telephone service for a wide telemarketing research project. Rico met with Brewer on October 27, 1986 and asked him for 15 codes, and Brewer told him the fee would be $200 per code, giving him a list of around 17 codes. Rico used Brewer’s phone, tried out each of the codes on the list, and reported that only five were working and that he would need more. The next morning, October 28, in a two hour period the investigators traced 57 phone calls placed from Brewer’s phone to the TNT 800 number. That afternoon, Rico returned to Brewer’s office and Brewer gave him the same list with new numbers penciled in. He again tested the numbers from Brewer’s phone and verified that 17 of the new codes worked. Brewer wrote an invoice to Rico selling him the access codes for 14 days “replacement guaranteed.”
This evidence was presented to a jury who convicted Brewer of violating 18 U.S. C. § 1029 by trafficking in counterfeit long distance access codes and possessing 15 or more counterfeit and unauthorized access devices on October 27, Counts 1 & 2, and of illegally trafficking in and possessing 15 or more counterfeit and unauthorized access devices on October 28, Counts 3 & 4. The court sentenced Brewer to five years in prison for Count 2 followed by concurrent terms of five years probation for Counts 2, 3, and 4.
Brewer appeals his conviction, arguing that Congress did not intend for 18 U.S.C. § 1029 to reach misuse of telephone access codes, and that even if the statute did apply, Brewer’s specific conduct does not fall within the statute because (1) an access code cannot be both “unauthorized” and “counterfeit”; (2) a working access code cannot be “counterfeit;” and, (3) a terminated access code cannot be “unauthorized.”
II
Brewer was indicted under 18 U.S. C. §§ 1029(a)(1) and (a)(3), which provide: (1) Whoever—
(1) knowingly and with intent to defraud produces, uses, or traffics in one or more counterfeit access devices;
[or]
(3) knowingly and with intent to defraud possesses fifteen or more devices which are counterfeit or unauthorized access devices;
shall, if the offense affects interstate or foreign commerce, be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
The statute also provides the following definitions:
(e) As used in this section—
(1) the term “access device” means any card, plate, code, account number, or other means of account access that can be used, alone or in conjunction with another access device, to obtain money, goods, services, or any other thing of value, or that can be used to initiate a transfer of funds (other than a transfer originated solely by paper instrument);
(2) the term “counterfeit access device” means any access device that is counterfeit, fictitious, altered, or forged, or an identifiable component of an access device or a counterfeit access device;
(3) the term “unauthorized access device” means any access device that is lost, stolen, expired, revoked, canceled, or obtained with intent to defraud;
(4) the term “produce” includes design, alter, authenticate, duplicate, or assemble;
(5) the term “traffic” means transfer, or otherwise dispose of, to another, or obtain control of with intent to transfer or dispose of; and
(6) the term “device-making equipment” means any equipment mechanism, or impression designed or primarily used for making an access device or a counterfeit access device.
Although its legislative history suggests that the primary focus of section 1029 was to fill cracks in the criminal law targeted at credit card abuse, we are persuaded that Brewer’s conduct is reached by a practical reading of the statute. Both the Senate and House Reports on the statute state that the definition of “access device” was intended to be “broad enough to encompass technological advances.” Both reports also make specific reference to personal identification codes such as those used to obtain cash from automatic teller machines. Thus, although apparently this is the first case to do so, we need not stretch to read long distance access codes into the section 1029 definition of “access device.”
Our reading denies none of Brewer’s rights to due process because the language of the statute gives fair notice that misuse of a long distance access code constitutes a crime under section 1029. The test of whether a statute is unconstitutionally vague so as to deprive fair notice is whether it provides a person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is proscribed. This test is met. Furthermore, “the requirement that statutes give fair notice cannot be used as a shield by one who is already bent on serious wrongdoing.” At the very least, Brewer must have known that hacking out long distance access codes to obtain free long distance service was “wrong.”
Ill
Brewer argues that even if abuse of long distance codes falls within the statutory language, his conviction is improper, first because a long distance code cannot be both a “counterfeit access device” and an “unauthorized access device”; second, because a working long distance code cannot be a “counterfeit access device”; and third, because a terminated long distance code cannot be an “access device.”
Brewer argues that his convictions on Counts 1 and 3 (for trafficking in counterfeit access devices) are inconsistent with his convictions on Counts 2 & 4 (for possessing unauthorized access devices) because “counterfeit” and “unauthorized” are mutually exclusive. Brewer contends that an access code is either counterfeit, which is totally forged or altered, or it is unauthorized, which is genuine but possessed without authority, but that it cannot be both. Brewer argues that the separate definitions for each term in section 1029(e) and the use of the disjunctive “or” in section 1029(a)(3), “devices which are counterfeit or unauthorized access devices,” mean that Congress intended to create a dichotomy between the terms.
The argument is not without some force, but its difficulty is that even if Congress did intend to create a definitional dichotomy between the two terms, it does not necessarily follow that Brewer’s conduct cannot fall within the meaning of both, and it did. The codes are both “counterfeit,” because they are “fictitious” and “forged,” and “unauthorized,” since they were “obtained with intent to defraud.” Congress need not have anticipated that technological advances would create the opportunity for conduct that meets both definitions.
By the same token, we are unpersuaded by Brewer’s broader argument that a legitimate access code cannot ever be “counterfeit.” Brewer argues that the codes he obtained were genuine code numbers placed in the TNT computer and thus were not “counterfeit.” However, an equally plausible interpretation is that Brewer did not “obtain” the codes from the computer but fabricated codes that just happened to be identical to the TNT codes. By analogy, someone who manufactures phony credit cards is no less a “counterfeiter” because he happens to give them numbers that match valid accounts.
Finally, Brewer argues that his conviction on Count 2, possessing 15 or more unauthorized access codes on October 27, is invalid because on that day he possessed only five working access codes. He contends that a terminated access code is not an access code that can be used to obtain anything of value as the statutory definition requires. The legislative history of the statute indicates that the requirement of possessing 15 codes was written into the statute to target major fraud operations. We are not persuaded that Congress intended the statute to require that each of those 15 code numbers be active. Such a requirement would serve as a disincentive to credit card or long distance companies immediately to invalidate stolen or lost numbers to protect themselves. More importantly, the argument fails to recognize that the definitional section of the statute contemplates the misuse of revoked or canceled access codes.
Brewer’s arguments are clever and are skillfully presented. Ultimately, however, we are persuaded that their adoption would frustrate Congressional purpose — and that purpose controls.
We AFFIRM.
. See, S.Rep. No. 98-368, 98th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1984 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 3182, 3647, at 3655; H.R.Rep. No. 98-894, 98th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1984 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 3689, at 3705.
. S.Rep. at 3656; H.Rep. at 3705.
. Home Depot, Inc. v. Guste, 773 F.2d 616 (5th Cir.1985).
.United States v. Griffin, 589 F.2d 200, 207 (5th Cir.1979); United States v. Ragen, 314 U.S. 513, 524, 62 S.Ct. 374, 379, 86 L.Ed. 383 (1942) (on no construction can the statutory provisions here involved become a trap for those who act in good faith).
. See 18 U.S.C. § 1029(e)(3).

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

Choices:

Answer: 1