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. Cole Arba MILLER, Appellant.
No. 14027.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
May 12, 1970.
George S. Daly, Jr., Charlotte, N. C., for appellant.
Keith S. Snyder, U. S. Atty., for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge, and RUSSELL, District Judge.
PER CURIAM:
The evidence in this case abundantly supported the conviction of the defendant, a federally licensed firearms dealer, for violation of 15 U.S.C. § 903(d) which requires licensed firearms dealers to maintain such permanent records as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe. On two occasions, agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division of the U.S. Treasury Department had sought to prevail upon the defendant to keep the prescribed records of his purchases and sales of firearms and had undertaken to explain to him the proper procedures. It is undisputed that he did not maintain the required records, and the' jury was not required to excuse him for his failure to do so by reason of his claim that it was burdensome. Defendant was given a suspended sentence.
Defendant contends that the District Court erred in limiting his cross-examination of another firearms dealer who appeared as a witness for the prosecution. It was defendant’s trial tactic to show that this witness was biased and his testimony unreliable; the District Judge excluded nothing which would have supported that effort. Defense counsel questioned whether the witness might be biased as a result of the receipt of a check from the defendant which was returned unpaid. Then, apparently to determine whether the witness might be testifying against the defendant as the result of a promise of immunity from similar prosecution, defense counsel asked whether the agents investigating the case had ever questioned the adequacy of the witness’ own records. After the witness responded in the negative, the District Judge upheld the Government’s objection to further pursuit of that particular line of inquiry. We perceive no reversible error in that ruling.
Affirmed.
. Subsequent to these violations, § 903 of Title 15 was repealed and replaced by §§ 922 and 923 of Title 18 (Pub.L. 90-351, Title IV, § 906, June 19, 1968, 82 Stat. 234).
. The prescribed regulations appear in 26 C.F.R. 177.51.

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