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:
FISCHER INDUSTRIES, INC., Petitioner-Appellant, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent-Appellee.
No. 87-1182.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Argued Feb. 22, 1988.
Decided March 22, 1988.
Harlan Pomeroy (argued), Baker & Hos-tetler, Washington, D.C., for petitioner-appellant.
William F. Nelson, Chief Counsel, IRS, Michael L. Paup, Chief, Appellate Section, Roger M. Olsen, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tax Div., Dept, of Justice, Washington, D.C., Ann Belanger Durney, William A. Whitledge (argued), for respondent-appellee.
Before ENGEL, MERRITT and KENNEDY, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Petitioner Fischer Industries, Inc. appeals a judgment of tax deficiency and additions to tax for the years 1975-80, totaling over $1 million, entered against it by the Honorable John Williams, Jr. of the United States Tax Court on November 24, 1986.
Fischer, an Ohio corporation, owned four subsidiaries during the relevant time period. Of these, three had made a practice of computing their annual tax returns by using a Last-in, First-out (LIFO) inventory system. However, Mayfran, Inc., the fourth subsidiary, used a First-in, First-out (FIFO) system prior to 1975. In 1975, Fischer decided that all of its subsidiaries, whose taxes were filed in a consolidated tax return, should use the same inventory method, LIFO. Thus, Mayfran was converted from a FIFO to a LIFO system.
A taxpayer is permitted under 26 U.S.C. § 472 to change this inventory accounting system to LIFO if he complies with the appropriate regulations. According to 26 C.F.R. 1.472-3(a):
The LIFO inventory method may be adopted and used only if the taxpayer files with his income tax return for the taxable year as of the close of which the method is first to be used a statement of his election to use such inventory method. The statement shall be made on Form 970 pursuant to the instructions printed with respect thereto and to the requirements of this section, or in such other manner as may be acceptable to the Commissioner.
Id.
Fischer did not file a Form 970 until April 16, 1986, during the trial of this case. Further, on its 1975 tax return, Fischer failed to answer a question which asked whether there was any substantial change in its method of inventory calculation. However, Fischer claimed that it substantially complied with the required procedure. Fischer stated that it correctly calculated its income tax for the period of 1975-1980, using the LIFO method. Taxpayer further asserted that it had furnished all requested records to the Internal Revenue Service auditors who, in 1979, investigated its 1975 tax return, including a 1975 financial statement that noted Mayfran’s change from FIFO to LIFO. Finally, Fischer claimed that its 1986 filing of Form 970 perfected its LIFO election.
The Tax Court judge found that Fischer had not substantially complied with the Commissioner’s regulations. He concluded that there was no way for the Commissioner to determine from Fischer’s 1975 tax return that a LIFO election had been made. Thus, he found that no valid LIFO election was made and accordingly entered his decision finding tax deficiencies and additions to tax.
On appeal, Fischer contends that the Tax Court erred by finding that Fischer did not make a binding choice to use LIFO for all subsidiaries beginning in 1975 and further erred by failing to realize that the LIFO decision was perfected by later acts.
Upon a careful consideration of the record and briefs of the parties in this appeal, we conclude that no valid LIFO election was made for the tax years in question. We are reinforced in our view that the Tax Court’s conclusions are correct by our independent examination of the tax returns in question. That review convinces us that there is nothing in the returns themselves that would have given the Commissioner adequate notice that a change from FIFO to LIFO had taken place. Thus, there was no substantial equivalent of Form 970, whose regulatory function is to assure that a taxpayer adopting LIFO provides “a statement of his election to use such inventory method.” 26 C.F.R. 1.472-3.
Accordingly, for the reasons stated by the Honorable John Williams, Jr. in his opinion filed in the Tax Court, 87 T.C. 116 (1986), the judgment of the Tax Court is AFFIRMED.

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: 1