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:
NEWCOMB et al. v. YORK ICE MACHINERY CORPORATION.
No. 6994.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Jan. 4, 1934.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 25, 1934.
Leonard Brown and M. A. Childers, both of San Antonio, Tex., for appellants.
Leo Brewer, of San Antonio, Tex., and R. Wayne Lawler, of Houston, Tex., for ap-pellee.
Before BRYAN, FOSTER, and WALKER, Circuit Judges.
WALKER, Circuit Judge.
When this case was here on a former appeal, this court held that the trial court had erred in striking appellants’ answer to' the bill, which put in issue allegations of the bill and set up matters of set-off and counterclaim, and the case was remanded for further proceedings. Newcomb v. York Ice Machinery Corporation (C. C. A.) 56 F.(2d) 576. For a statement of the issues raised by the bill and the answer thereto reference is made to the opinion rendered when the case was here on the first appeal. Upon a consideration of the evidence adduced in the trial after the re-mandment of the cause the court found in favor of the appellee on the issues raised, and decreed accordingly. An examination of the evidence has led us to the conclusion that it duly supported the court’s findings of fact, and that none of those findings is properly subject to be set aside by this court. We think no useful purpose would be served by a recital or discussion of that evidence.
Error was assigned on the action of the court in holding that the burden was on the appellants, defendants below, to prove allegations of the answer to the bill by way of counterclaim as to the breach of the warranty, contained in the contract sued on for the sale by the appellee to the appellant Newcomb of an ice-making machine, of the ice-maldng capacity of that machine. The allegations referred to were of a matter of affirmative defense, the burden of proving which was on the appellants. Buckstaff v. Russell, 151 U. S. 626, 14 S. Ct. 448, 38 L. Ed. 292; O. C. Barber Mining & Fertilizing Co. v. Brown Hoisting Mach. Co. (C. C. A.) 258 F. 1; 24 R. C. L. 162.
The record shows no reversible error. The decree is
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: 99