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. Walter Brown SPEARS, Appellant.
No. 15206.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued April 7, 1971.
Decided May 10, 1971.
Fred Warren Bennett, Washington, D. C. (court-appointed counsel), for appellant.
Jean G. Rogers, Asst. U. S. Atty. (George Beall U. S. Atty., on brief), for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and BOREMAN and BRYAN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Convicted on three counts of bank robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 2113(a), (b), and (d), the defendant complains of a four-month delay between the discovery of evidence of his participation and the indictment, the showing of photograph spreads including his picture to witnesses without the presence of counsel at a time when he was not under arrest for, or charged with, the offense, and the questioning of government witnesses on re-direct examination concerning line-up identifications. He also claims the trial court erroneously ruled that if he should present a defense witness to testify that he did not participate in the robbery, the Government would be permitted to impeach the witness by use of his prior statement naming Spears as a participant. We find no error.
On the Government’s concession, we remand the case in order that the judgments on the first two counts may be vacated. In remanding we imply no criticism of the district judge’s original imposition of three concurrent sentences on the three counts. Had only a single sentence been imposed, and the judgment supporting that sentence been reversed without disturbing the convictions on the remaining counts, difficulties could have arisen on a remand, which the action taken obviated. However, the duplicitous sentences should not be left in effect after the conviction has become final.
We have not adopted the theory that on conviction of multiple counts all merge into one. United States v. Law-renson, 4 Cir., 298 F.2d 880. The considerations which weigh against multiple punishment for technically distinct offenses which arise out of precisely the same criminal conduct are not avoided by allowing the trial judge the added flexibility in selecting among ultimate sentencing options which the practice followed below gives him, so long as, -ultimately, only one of the sentences is left in effect.
Affirmed and remanded.

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