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:
James Eugene BOOTH, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.
No. 92-8609
Non-Argument Calendar.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
Aug. 4, 1993.
James Eugene Booth, pro se.
William Louis McKinnon, Jr., Asst. U.S. Atty., Atlanta, GA, for respondent-appellee.
Before HATCHETT, ANDERSON and COX, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
James Booth appeals from the district court’s denial of his pro se motion to vacate his sentence, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. After pleading guilty to transporting stolen goods in interstate commerce, Booth was sentenced to ten years imprisonment on July 27, 1983. Before being released on parole on January 8, 1988, Booth had accumulated 710 days of statutory good time credit. On August 1, 1988, Booth was reincarcerated for a parole violation. He subsequently discovered that the good time credits he had earned would not be available to reduce his sentence. Booth filed a motion to vacate his sentence in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleging that his good time credits were illegally forfeited upon his prior parole and that this action, taken without notice, violated his right to due process. The district court denied Booth’s motion.
28 C.F.R. § 2.35(b) addresses the issue of whether good time credits may be applied to shorten a prisoner’s period of incarceration following a parole violation. That regulation holds that good time credits do not survive conditional release, and may not be used either to shorten the period of supervision following conditional release or to shorten the period of imprisonment that may be imposed for a parole violation:
It is the Commission’s interpretation of the statutory scheme for parole and good time that the only function of good time credits is to determine the point in a prisoner’s sentence when, in the absence of parole, the prisoner is to be conditionally released on supervision, as described in subsection (a). Once an offender is conditionally released from imprisonment, either by parole or mandatory release, the good time earned during that period of imprisonment is of no further effect either to shorten the period of supervision or to shorten the period of imprisonment which the offender may be required to serve for violation of parole or mandatory release.
28 C.F.R. § 2.35(b) (1992). Section 2.35 was amended in 1985 to set forth the Commission’s interpretation of the interaction between the parole statutes and the prison good time statutes. 50 Fed.Reg. 46, 282 (1985). At that time, the Parole Commission explained that the amendment was not a new interpretation of the law, but rather a formalization of the Commission’s long-standing practice of treating good time credits as being “used up” once a prisoner is paroled or given mandatory release. Id. The Commission noted that its practice had not been to order the “forfeiture” of good time, although the result would be the same whether the time was considered used up or forfeited. Id.
Agency regulations are entitled to great deference. Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-45, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-83, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). We must also defer to a federal agency’s construction of its own regulation unless it is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the language and purpose of the regulation. Parker v. Bowen, 788 F.2d 1512 (11th Cir.1986). Because we conclude that the Parole Commission’s regulation and explanatory material concerning the viability of good time credits following parole are reasonable, we will follow their dictates. Under the regulation, all of Booth’s good time credits were used up when he was released on parole. They were thus unavailable to reduce the sentence he received for his parole violation. See Boniface v. Carlson, 881 F.2d 669 (9th Cir.1989) (following 1985 amendment to regulation and holding that good time used up when prisoner paroled); Ray v. Brewer, 808 F.2d 19 (7th Cir.1986) (same).
AFFIRMED.
. Case law in the former Fifth Circuit held that a prisoner forfeited all good time credit when he violated parole. Henning v. United States Bureau of Prisons, 472 F.2d 1221 (5th Cir.1973). Prior to the 1985 amendment to 28 C.F.R. § 2.35, this court also followed that line of cases. Swicegood v. United States Parole Com., 755 F.2d 880 (11th Cir.1985). As the Commission pointed out, the end result is the same whether one considers a prisoner's good time credits to be used up at the time of release or forfeited as a consequence of a parole violation. 50 Fed.Reg. 46,282 (1985).
. Booth’s other arguments are without merit and warrant no discussion.

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: 0