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:
Gregg A. TALLMAN, Appellant, v. Ronald W. REAGAN, Ed Meese, Otis Bowen and Richard Turner, Appellees.
No. 87-1586.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted Dec. 17, 1986.
Decided May 10, 1988.
Gregg A. Tallman, pro se.
John Beamer, Asst. U.S. Atty., Des Moines, Iowa, for appellees.
Before McMILLIAN, FAGG and BOWMAN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Gregg A. Tallman appeals pro se from a final order entered in the District Court for the Southern District of Iowa dismissing his complaint. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
Tallman’s action arises out of his application in 1982 for Social Security disability benefits after he was injured in an industrial accident. On August 20, 1986, Tallman filed the instant complaint claiming that Ronald Reagan, Otis Bowen, Ed Meese, Richard Turner, and the United States government deprived Tallman of his constitutional rights and his rights under the Social Security Act. Tallman argued, that at that point, several years had passed since his disability claim was initially filed and he had not yet been awarded benefits, due to appellees’ negligence in handling his application. Tallman alleged that the delay in receiving benefits caused his injury to worsen, and he sought actual and punitive damages in the amount of ten million dollars.
On November 14, 1986, the district court dismissed Tallman’s complaint. Tallman subsequently filed a “motion to amend judgment” (November 18, 1986), a “motion for continuance” (December 8, 1986), and a “motion for judgment” (April 2, 1987). On April 7, 1987, the same district court entered a final judgment in Tallman’s disability case, reversing the decision of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to deny Tallman disability benefits and ordering the Secretary to pay Tallman benefits past due. On May 7, 1987, the court denied Tallman’s post-judgment motions in the instant action, and this appeal followed.
A complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim “ ‘unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.’ ” Kaylor v. Fields, 661 F.2d 1177, 1181 (8th Cir.1981) (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957)). As we read Tallman’s pleadings, we understand his complaint as an attempt to state a Bivens-type constitutional tort action against the individual appellees, and an action under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2674, against the government.
Tallman’s complaint, however, is deficient in several respects. Only federal officials who actually participate in alleged violations are subject to a Bivens-type suit. Laswell v. Brown, 683 F.2d 261, 268 (8th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1210, 103 S.Ct. 1205, 75 L.Ed.2d 446 (1983). Tallman did not allege that appellees Reagan, Meese or Bowen actually participated in, nor how appellee Turner may have contributed to, the alleged violations. Tallman’s complaint alleged at the most gross negligence on the part of appellees, which does not implicate the due process clause. See Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 328, 106 S.Ct. 662, 663, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986); Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 347, 106 S.Ct. 668, 670, 88 L.Ed.2d 677 (1986). The Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 405(h), precludes a FTCA action “to recover on any claim arising under this subchapter.” Cf. Marin v. HEW, Health Care Fin. Agency, 769 F.2d 590, 592 (9th Cir.1985) (FTCA action for damages caused by negligently tardy processing of cost reports barred), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1061, 106 S.Ct. 808, 88 L.Ed.2d 783 (1986). Finally, we note that in Heckler v. Day, 467 U.S. 104, 104 S.Ct. 2249, 81 L.Ed.2d 88 (1984), the Supreme Court held that Congress, in enacting the Social Security Act, had repeatedly rejected the “imposition of mandatory deadlines on agency adjudication of disputed disability claims.” Id. at 119, 104 S.Ct. at 2257.
Although we are sympathetic to Tallman in that it took several years before he was finally awarded benefits, his complaint in the instant action failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.
Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.
. The Honorable William C. Stuart, Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of Iowa.
. The record indicates that Assistant United States Attorney Richard Turner represented the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Tallman's action for judicial review of the Secretary’s decision to deny benefits.
. In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), the Supreme Court recognized a cause of action for damages against federal officials for violation of one’s fourth amendment rights. In Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 99 S.Ct. 2264, 60 L.Ed.2d 846 (1979), this right was extended to actions arising under the due process clause of the fifth amendment.

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