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:
MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellant, v. Elena SALAZAR et al., Appellees.
No. 16970.
United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.
April 30, 1958.
Rehearing Denied June 26,1958.
T. Gilbert Sharpe, Sharpe, Cunningham & Garza, Brownsville, Tex., for appellant.
William E. York, McAllen, Tex., Ben S. Hardy, Brownsville, Tex. (Ewers, Cox & Toothaker, McAllen, Tex., of counsel), for appellees.
Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and BROWN and WISDOM, Circuit Judges.
HUTCHESON, Chief Judge.
This appeal from a judgment in a suit for death damages resulting from a crossing collision presents two questions for decision.
One of these is whether the answers of the jury, “Yes” and “It was” to Special Issues 14 and 15, respectively, are so inconsistent with, indeed contradictory of their answers to other issues answered in defendant’s favor, and also so without support in the evidence, that the judgment for plaintiff must be reversed and a judgment entered for defendant on the verdict.
The other, in the alternative, is whether these answers are so inconsistent with and contradictory of the answers of the jury to other issues, and particularly to issues 38 and 39, that the verdict will not support any judgment, and that the judgment must be reversed and the cause remanded for trial anew.
The suit grows out of a collision between a train of the defendant and an automobile in which the deceased was riding as a passenger. The answers of the jury to most of the issues were favorable to the defendant, and it is here insisting that the answer “Yes” to Special Issue No. 14 and the answer “It was” to Special Issue No. 15, on which plaintiff’s judgment depends, are without support in the evidence and that upon the answers of the jury to the other issues and the controlling principles of law, as declared and applied in Missouri-Kansas-Texas Ry. Co. of Texas v. Lane, 5 Cir., 213 F.2d 851 and Brown v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 5 Cir., 234 F.2d 204, the first an appeal from a judgment on a jury verdict, the second an appeal from a judgment on findings in a non-jury case, the judgment for plaintiff must be reversed and judgment entered for defendant on the verdict.
Insisting that no negligence, which was the proximate cause of the injury, could under the record in this case be properly found, and that the answers to Issues Nos. 14 and 15 must be disregarded, appellant points in support to findings of the jury: that the defendant gave all proper and warning signals; that there was no obstruction to prevent the driver of the automobile from seeing the train; that he was guilty of negligence which was a proximate cause of the collision; and that the employees of' the defendant were not negligent in failing to discover the perilous situation of those in the automobile in time to avert the collision.
While a thorough and careful consideration of the record and of the cited' cases in the light most favorable to plaintiff’s claim, prevents our agreeing with, the appellant: that there is no evidence on which a finding favorable to plaintiff' could rest and the judgment must therefore be reversed and here rendered for appellant; we are of the clear opinion, that the answers of the jury are so completely inconsistent and contradictory-that the verdict will not support a judgment. We reach this conclusion because, though the language used in submitting Issues Nos. 14, 38 and 39 is not identical, it is in substance the same. In each issue, the attention of the jury is directed, and its finding is asked with reference, to a time immediately prior to the collision. In answering “Yes” to Issue No. 14, that there was negligence in failing to keep a look-out at that time, and “No” to Issue No. 39, that there was not such negligence, the jury gave completely contradictory answers. Matters standing thus, we are constrained to hold: that the inconsistency in the answers is such that the verdict will support neither the judgment entered below nor any other judgment; and that the judgment appealed from must be reversed and the cause remanded for trial anew.
. “Special Issue No. 14: Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that immediately prior to the collision in question, any member of defendant’s crew failed to keep a proper lookout, as that term is herein defined?
“Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’
“ ‘Answer: Yes
“ ‘Proper lookout’, as that term is used in this charge, means such a lookout as would be maintained by a person of ordinary prudence in the exercise of ordinary care under the same or similar circumstances.
“If you have answered the foregoing issue ‘Yes’, then proceed to answer:
“Special Issue No. 15: Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that such failure, if any, was a proximate cause of the collision in question?
“Answer ‘It was’ or ‘It was not.’
“Answer: It was”
. “Special Issue No. 38: Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that Conductor Farrow, or the fireman or engineer of the defendant railroad company, discovered the perilous position, if any, of the pick-up truck and its occupants or discovered that said pickup truck and its occupants was about to enter a position of peril, if any, immediately before the collision in question?
“Answer this issue ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’
“We the Jury answer: Yes.
“If you have answered the foregoing special issue ‘Yes’ and only in that event, proceed to answer the following special issue:
“Special Issue No. 39: Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that after Conductor Farrow, or the fireman or engineer of the defendant railroad company, discovered the perilous position of said pick-up truck and its occupants, or that it was about to enter such position of peril (if you have so-found), that the said Conductor Farrow or the fireman or engineer of the-defendant railroad company, became aware, or by the exercise of ordinary-prudence ought to have been aware, in. time to have averted the collision in question by the use of ordinary care in the-use of the means at hand consistent with the safety of himself, the train, and its occupants, that the said pick-up-truck and its occupants either probably could not escape from such perilous position, or would be unlikely to do so.
“Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
“We, the jury, answer: No”.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0