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, Appellee, v. Vaughan SNEAD, Appellant.
No. 75-1156.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Aug. 22, 1975.
Decided Nov. 11, 1975.
William A. Borders, Jr., Washington, D.C. (Ruth R. Banks on brief) for appellant.
Edward Baird, Asst. U. S. Atty. (William B. Cummings, U. S. Atty., and J. Brian Donnelly, Asst. U. S. Atty., on brief) for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and WINTER and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
The defendant, convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia, of participation in a conspiracy to distribute narcotics, objects that the testimony does not show that he was ever in Virginia.
The testimony does show that he was selling narcotics of substantial quantities to two co-conspirators who were distributing them at retail in Franklin, Virginia, almost 200 miles from the District of Columbia. Each purchase from Snead was arranged in advance by telephone calls to him from his co-conspirators who sought his advice about such things as retail pricing. One of the co-conspirators testified to a telephone call received from Snead which had been placed either to her or to the other co-conspirator.
From all of this, it was clearly inferable that Snead knew that his co-conspirators were distributing the drugs in the Eastern District of Virginia. Even if he did not know, however, each member of the conspiracy is responsible for the acts of the others in furtherance of the conspiracy, and all conspirators may be tried where any of those acts are performed. Hyde v. United States, 225 U.S. 347, 32 S.Ct. 793, 56 L.Ed. 1114 (1912);'' see generally 1 C. Wright, Federal Practice & Procedure § 303 (1969).
Complaint is made of the fact that bench conferences were not taken down by the reporter. Counsel was informed that he could dictate the substance of each conference to a reporter during recesses and defense counsel availed himself of that opportunity with respect to some of the bench conferences.
A statute, 28 U.S.C. § 753(b), requires the recording “verbatim by shorthand or by mechanical means which may be augmented by electronic sound recording . [of] all proceedings in criminal cases had in open court . . . .” (Emphasis added.) The direction is simple and clear; the statute should be obeyed. See United States v. Jenkins, 442 F.2d 429, 438 (5 Cir. 1967); Casalman v. Upchurch, 386 F.2d 813 (5 Cir. 1967); Calhoun v. United States, 384 F.2d 180 (5 Cir. 1967); Brown v. United States, 314 F.2d 293 (10 Cir. 1963).
Our examination of the record in this case convinces us that no actual prejudice resulted in this instance, but the practice of noncompliance with the statute seems fraught with potential for mistake and possible prejudice, particularly if bench conferences are frequent and numerous and recesses infrequent. It may be too much to place upon defense counsel the burden for accurately summarizing those conferences which may be important to the presentation of an appeal. However, not only does the record not reveal any prejudice, but counsel was unable to suggest any on the basis of the conferences which do not appear in the record. Since we find no prejudice to the defendant in this ease, a new trial will not be required.
We have examined the other contentions and found them meritless.
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: 1