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:
TAYLOR v. STEELE et al.
No. 14372.
United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.
Oct. 9, 1951.
See also, 182 F.2d 473.
H. Jackson Daniel, Jefferson City, Mo., appointed by the Court (Salkey & Jones, St. Louis, Mo.,: on the brief) for appellant. Appellant, also, submitted a brief pro se.
Fred L. Howard, Asst. U. S. Atty., Kansas City, Mo. (Sam M. Wear, U. S. Atty., Kansas City, Mo., on the brief), for appellees.
Before ' SANBORN, THOMAS, and COLLET, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This is an appeal in forma pauperis from an order denying a petition of the appellant, an indigent federal prisoner, for leave to commence in forma pauperis a civil action for damages against the Warden of the United States Medical ‘Center for Federal Prisoners.at Springfield, Missouri, and members of his staff, upon the grounds that appellant’s transfer by the Attorney General to that institution was illegal, that the appellees are therefore liable for false imprisonment, and that they have subjected appellant to medical treatment without his consent.
This Court appointed counsel to represent the appellant on this appeál. His counsel has, by brief and oral argument, done all that is humanly possible to make it appear that the appellant in his proposed complaint has stated a meritorious claim against the appellees, and should have been permitted to proceed against them in forma pauperis.
For the purposes of this appeal we assume, without deciding, that the order appealed from is appealable and that the complaint which was attached to the appellant’s petition was not subject to dismissal for insufficiency of statement. It is our opinion, however, that this appeal is without merit and that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to permit the appellant to commence in forma pauperis an action for damages against the appellees. We find nothing in Section 1915, Title 28, U.S.C.A. which requires á District Court to permit a federal prisoner to sue in forma pauperis those in whose custody he has been placed by the Attorney General for confinement and medical care.
The order appealed from is 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