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:
JOHNSTON v. UNITED STATES.
No. 10779.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Oct. 10, 1944.
Clarence L. Gere, of Seattle, Wash., for appellant.
J. Charles Dennis, U. S. Atty., and G. D. Hile, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Seattle, Wash., for appellee.
Before DENMAN, STEPHENS, and HEALY, Circuit Judges.
STEPHENS, Circuit Judge.
In December of 1939 defendant Johnston was indicted and adjudged guilty, upon the entry of his plea of guilty, for robbing the mail and endangering the life of a mail custodian by the use of a dangerous weapon in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 320. He was sentenced to imprisonment for twenty-five years. In March of 1944 he made the within motion, before the United States District Court which had presided over the original hearing, to vacate the judgment and sentence on the ground that the indictment failed to state a federal offense and consequently that the trial" court lacked jurisdiction over the matter. The motion was denied, and defendant appeals.
The challenged indictment alleged in part that defendant did “rob and take from the person, possession and in the presence of one FI. F. McElhaney, Clerk in Charge of Contract Station No. 59, a branch of the United States Post Office at Seattle, Washington, without the consent of the said H. F. McElhaney, and against his will, certain monies which were then and there in the lawful charge, control and custody of the said H. F. McElhaney in his official capacity and character as Clerk in charge of said Contract Station No. 59, a branch of the United States Post 'Office at Seattle, Washington, to-wit, the'sum of Twenty-two and 94/100 Dollars * * * being postage stamp funds of the said Contract Station No. 59 * * * ”
According to defendant’s argument the indictment is fatally defective in failing specifically to charge that the money taken by him was property of the United States since the statute under which the indictment was framed, 18 U.S.C.A. § 320, is limited to robbery in connection with “mail matter, money, or other property of the United States.” Defendant contends that under the standard contract between the Postmaster General and a branch post office the latter is not supplied with postage stamp funds by the government, that the indictment herein merely charged custody and control, as to the money stolen, by the clerk of a contract station in his official capacity, that necessary allegations in a criminal indictment cannot be supplied by implication, intendment or recital, and that therefore an allegation of the ownership by the United States of the money taken, essential to the statement of a federal offense, is lacking.
The indictment alleged that the money taken was at the time of the robbery in the lawful custody of a certain clerk in his official capacity as clerk in charge of a branch of the United States Post Office. We believe that such an averment of possession in an agent of the United States under the authority of his official position is the equivalent of an averment of ownership by the United States. See dictum in Hubbard v. United States, 9 Cir., 1935, 79 F.2d 850, 852; Hoback v. United States, 4 Cir., 1922, 284 F. 529, 532.
Our decision herein need not be based alone- on our interpretation of the allegation of possession, for we may consider herein all implications of the language used in the indictment. In Elder v. United States, 9 Cir., 1944, 142 F.2d 199, 200, this court recognized that necessary facts could be drawn by reasonable inference from the allegations of an indictment where that document was not challenged in the trial court but was questioned for the first time on appeal from a conviction in the trial court. Hagner v. United States, 1932, 285 U.S. 427, 433, 52 S.Ct. 417, 76 L.Ed. 861. The same rule applies in the instant case where the indictment was not contested until the present motion to vacate the judgment was made more than four years after judgment and sentence.
The allegation in the indictment herein as to the custody of the money stolen together with the declaration that the money constituted postage stamp funds of the branch post office we think raises a reasonable inference that the money was property of the United States. Under various pertinent statutes, postal revenues, including sums received by reason of keeping a branch office, constitute public money belonging to the United States, 39 U.S.C.A. §§ 42 and 46, 5 U.S.C.A. § 380; the Postmaster General is given authority to establish branch offices and to make rules and regulations for the government thereof, 39 U.S.C.A. § 158, and to enter into contracts for the conduct of such offices, 39 U.S.C.A. § 161.
Under the general procedure established by the postal regulations in effect at the time the robbery herein was committed — of which regulations we take judicial notice, Caha v. United States, 1894, 152 U.S. 211, 221, 14 S.Ct. 513, 38 L.Ed. 415-postmasters issued stamp supplies to clerks in charge of contract stations within the amounts of the bonds of the clerks and received in return fixed credit receipts; the supplies appeared on the records of the postmasters as stock on hand; money received from the sale of such stamp supplies was used to purchase additional supplies; periodic inventories were taken of both supplies and cash in the custody of employees of contract stations, Postal Laws and Regulations of 1932, § 152, subdivision 4.
The provision for the “purchase” of additional supplies does not necessarily mean a transfer for cash of stamp supplies by the government to clerks of contract stations and a resultant transfer of title. The definition of the word “purchase” in Funk & Wagnalls’ “New Standard Dictionary” (1940) applicable here is: “3. Law. (1) To acquire (property) by one’s own act or agreement, as distinguished from the act or mere operation of law.” Other provisions of the postal regulations cannot be reconciled with a change of. ownership theory, such as the requirement that stamp supplies originally shall be issued only within the amount of the branch clerk’s bond, and strict requirements for the keeping of stamps and funds in safes (Regulations, § 106, subdivision 4). Clearly, the regulations are inconsistent with the view that stamps and funds are property of clerks in charge of contract stations and therefore property in which the United States has no interest. Further, as has heen seen, the branch clerk invests no money of his own for such supplies but is issued the initial supply upon his fixed credit receipt which is secured to the government by the manager’s bond.
Nothing appears in the postmaster-branch office contract relied upon by defendant contradictory to government ownership of funds in the possession of the clerk in charge of a contract station, even should we assume the right to take judicial notice of it.
The indictment alleges a federal offense, and defendant-appellant’s motion to vacate the judgment and sentence based thereon was properly denied.
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: 0