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. Howell C. WILLIS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 78-5649
Summary Calendar.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
July 27, 1979.
Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Sept. 12, 1979.
Howell C. Willis, pro se.
Arnaldo N. Cavazos, Jr., Dallas, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before AINSWORTH, CLARK and VANCE, Circuit Judges.
Rule 18, 5 Cir.; see Isbell Enterprises, Inc. v. Citizens Casualty Co. of New York et at, 5 Cir., 1970, 431 F.2d 409, Part I.
PER CURIAM:
Howell Willis, a tax protestor, appeals his conviction on two counts of willful failure to supply the Internal Revenue Service with information required by statute or regulation for the tax years 1974 and 1975, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7203. Among his numerous contentions, Willis asserts a right to claim on his income tax returns his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination and further urges that both the district judge and the prosecutor made prejudicial comments during his trial which require reversal of his conviction. We reject these and other contentions of appellant and affirm.
In 1974 and 1975, Willis filed IRS income tax Form 1040’s that stated his name, address and social security number and asserted line by line his fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The 1974 return reported only that defendant had $15.10 in dividend income and 24<p in interest income while the return for 1975 provided no financial information at all. Willis appended to his tax returns various documents purportedly explaining his failure to supply further data regarding his income and his assertion of the fifth amendment privilege. Evidence at trial showed that Willis earned wages of $19,332 in 1974 and $8,611 in 1975.
Our decisions in United States v. Brown, 5 Cir., 1979, 591 F.2d 307; United States v. Wade, 5 Cir., 1978, 585 F.2d 573, and United States v. Johnson, 5 Cir., 1978, 577 F.2d 1304, conclusively dispose of appellant’s contentions respecting his right to assert his privilege against self-incrimination in lieu of supplying the tax information required by statute.
Even if, as Willis argues, the trial judge and the prosecutor made prejudicial comments, which we do not concede, our review of the record convinces us that, given the incontestable evidence of guilt, these remarks did not affect appellant’s substantial rights. “Because the prejudicial effect, if any, of the comments was slight in relation to the overwhelming evidence of guilt, any impropriety was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Greene, 5 Cir., 1978, 578 F.2d 648, 653-54. See United States v. Haynes, 5 Cir., 1978, 573 F.2d 236, 239.
We have considered appellant’s remaining assertions of error and, finding them merit-less, we affirm.
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