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:
Wilbur E. DOW, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Max H. WYMAN, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 71-2948.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Feb. 21, 1974.
Rehearing Denied March 20, 1974.
DeWitt Williams (argued), J. Kenneth McMullin of Williams, Lanza, Kastner & Gibbs, Seattle, Wash., for plaintiff-appellant.
William R. Smith (argued), William V. Vetter of Graham, McCord, Dunn, Moen, Johnston & Rosenquist, Seattle, Wash., for defendant-appellee.
Before HUFSTEDLER and KILKENNY, Circuit Judges and TAYLOR, District Judge.
District of Idaho, sitting by designation.
OPINION
FRED M. TAYLOR, District Judge:
This diversity action was instituted by plaintiff, Wilbur E. Dow, Jr. (appellant), a lawyer of long standing in the State of New York, against defendant, Max H. Wyman (appellee), a citizen of the State of Washington, to recover $25,000 attorney fees claimed to be due and owing under and pursuant to a property settlement agreement, dated January 23, 1970, made and entered into by and between the appellee and his wife, Karen Wyman.
Subsequent to appellee’s answer raising several defenses, including the defense that appellant’s right to payment of attorney fees was subject to an unfulfilled condition precedent, the appellee moved for a summary judgment. The district court concluded that the agreement was not ambiguous and that any right appellant may have had thereunder was subject to an unfilled condition precedent. Summary judgment was rendered for appellee and this appeal is from said judgment which we are constrained to affirm.
Marital difficulties having arisen between appellee and his wife, Karen Wy-man, both of Seattle, Washington, and after having been separated for several months, Mrs. Wyman contacted appellant and employed him to assist her with her marital problems. Thereafter, appellant, as Mrs. Wyman’s attorney, negotiated a separation and property settlement agreement between Karen Wyman and appellee, resulting in the drafting of a written agreement by appellant and the appellee’s attorney. The final draft of the agreement was executed by appellant’s client, Karen Wyman, and the ap-pellee on January 23, 1970 in the State of Washington.
The preamble to the agreement provides :
“WHEREAS differences have arisen between M. H. Wyman of Seattle, Washington, and his wife, Karen Wy-man of Seattle, Washington, as a result of which they have for some months been living separate and apart and an action for divorce has been or is about to be instituted in the State of Idaho by Mrs. Wyman against Mr. Wyman, the following agreement settling the property rights of the parties is entered into, to become effective upon the granting of a divorce decree in the said Idaho action.” [emphasis added]
Paragraph 12 of the agreement provides :
“12. Mr. Wyman shall pay to Wilbur E. Dow, Jr., attorney for Mrs. Wy-man, an attorney’s fee of Twenty-Five Thousand and No/100 Dollars ($25,000), said payment to be made in full when the said Idaho Divorce Decree is granted.” [emphasis added] And the concluding paragraph of the agreement provides:
“This separation agreement, a copy of which is retained by each of the parties hereto, shall become effective upon the granting of the said Idaho Divorce Decree and shall thereupon be binding upon the parties hereto and their respective heirs and legal representatives.” [emphasis added]
The services of appellant, in behalf of Mrs. Wyman, terminated upon the execution of the agreement. Appellant was not at any time requested to and did not perform services for and in behalf of appellee.
Following the execution of the agreement, Karen Wyman went to Sun Valley, Idaho as contemplated, for the purpose of establishing the required residence to obtain an Idaho divorce. A few days prior to establishing her required six weeks residence in Idaho, she and appel-lee were reconciled, at which time she returned to Seattle with appellee in his airplane. Although Mrs. Wyman had employed an Idaho lawyer to institute the divorce proceedings, no such proceedings were ever instituted in Idaho. It appears that the reconciliation failed and on May 18, 1971, Karen Wyman brought a divorce action in the State of Washington, which action, so far as we are aware, is still pending.
Appellant contends that there are genuine issues as to material facts which should have been resolved after a trial and therefore the district court erred in rendering a judgment as a matter of law. We disagree.
Admittedly, the appellant’s action is predicated upon the written agreement to which he is a third party beneficiary. The issue then is whether under the terms and conditions of the agreement of January 23, 1970, the appellant is entitled to recover the attorney fees specified in the agreement from the appellee. The district court held that the agreement was unambiguous in regard to the payment of attorney fees to appellant by appellee for the services rendered by appellant to Karen Wyman in obtaining the property settlement. It is well settled that the determination of whether a written instrument is ambiguous is a question of law for the court. See Dale v. Preg, 204 F.2d 434, 435, 14 Alaska 299 (9th Cir. 1953); Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London v. Cordova Airlines, Inc., 283 F.2d 659, 663, fn. 6 (9th Cir. 1960), and Central Credit Collection Control Corp. v. Grayson, 7 Wash.App. 56, 499 P.2d 57, 59 (1972).
It is abundantly clear that the agreement prescribes the conditional nature of appellee’s obligation to pay appellant the attorney fees in question. Obviously the payment of the fees was a part of the property settlement which, according to the preamble to the agreement, did not become effective until a divorce was granted to Mrs. Wyman in an Idaho action for a divorce. Also, paragraph 12 of the agreement clearly states that ap-pellee’s obligation to pay the fees was conditioned on the obtaining of an Idaho divorce decree by Mrs. Wyman. In addition, the last paragraph of the agreement provides that the agreement was not to become effective until the granting of the Idaho divorce decree. Mrs. Wyman did not obtain an Idaho divorce decree as contemplated and consequently the condition of the agreement was not met in order to establish the obligation of appellee to pay the attorney fees to appellant.
We agree, as argued by appellant, that he is entitled to be paid for his services, rendered for and in behalf of Mrs. Wyman, but we disagree that under the terms of the agreement he is entitled to be paid by appellee. If, as argued by appellant, the appellee is obligated to pay the fees regardless of whether Mrs. Wyman obtained an Idaho divorce decree, the agreement could and should have so provided without specifically stating otherwise. It is not an uncommon occurrence for persons having marital difficulties to effect a reconciliation subsequent to a property settlement agreement and before a divorce decree is finally obtained. It clearly appears that appellant did not and could not expect appellee to pay his fees unless and until an Idaho divorce was obtained by his client, otherwise, the obligation of appellee to pay him would not have been contingent upon the granting of an Idaho divorce as provided in the agreement.
We affirm.

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