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:
HERB STEIN, INC., Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.
No. 16679.
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.
Nov. 18, 1966.
F. Wilson Chockley, Jr., Cleveland, Ohio, for petitioner, Walter, Haverfield, Buescher & Chockley, Cleveland, Ohio, on the brief.
Warren Laddon, N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., for respondent, Arnold Ordman, Gen. Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Associate Gen. Counsel, Marcel MalletPrevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Elliott Moore, Attys., N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., on the brief.
Before WEICK, Chief Judge, CELE-BREZZE, Circuit Judge, and THORNTON, Senior District Judge.
Thomas P. Thornton, Senior District Judge designation. of the Eastern District of Michigan, sitting by
PER CURIAM.
Universal Camera is still the law. It continues to impose upon Courts of Appeals the “obligation to make an independent review of the whole record.” See the opinion of this Court of October 4, 1966 written by Judge Edwards in National Labor Relations Board v. Checker Cab Company, 6 Cir., 367 F.2d 692, citing Universal Camera Corp. v. N.L.R.B., 340 U.S. 474, 71 S.Ct. 456, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951). We quote from Universal Camera at page 490, 71 S.Ct. at page 466:
“We conclude, therefore, that the Administrative Procedure Act and the Taft-Hartley Act direct that courts must now assume more responsibility for the reasonableness and fairness of Labor Board decisions than some courts has shown in the past. Reviewing courts must be influenced by a feeling that they are not to abdicate the conventional judicial function. Congress has imposed on them responsibility for assuring that the Board keeps within reasonable grounds. That responsibility is not less real because it is limited to enforcing the requirement that evidence appear substantial when viewed, on the record as a whole, by courts invested with the authority and enjoying the prestige of the Courts of Appeals. The Board’s findings are entitled to respect; but they must nonetheless be set aside when the record before a Court of Appeals clearly precludes the Board’s decision from being justified by a fair estímate of the worth of the testimony of witnesses or its informed judgment on matters within its special competence or both.”
Petitioner asks that an order of respondent be reviewed and set aside. Respondent requests that said order be enforced. The order is based upon a finding of the Board that petitioner was guilty of two violations of the National Labor Relations Act. The Board found that petitioner discharged and failed to rehire employee Frank Ralofsky for the purpose of discouraging union membership, in violation of Section 8(a) (3) and (1) of the Act. It found that petitioner coercively interrogated an employee (Ralofsky) regarding his union activities, in violation of Section 8(a) (1) of the Act. The fact of the discharge of Ralofsky is not in dispute. The reasons for the discharge are. The fact of the alleged interrogation (by Stein, Jr.) was testified to by Ralofsky and emphatically denied by Stein, Jr. Whether or not it took place depends upon the non-credibility of one of these two men. We are not in a position to judge the veracity of either. We will, therefore, for purposes of this discussion, assume that there was some sort of interrogation of Ralofsky by Stein, Jr. relating to a particular activity by Ralofsky at or about the time when respondent contends it took place. We are in a position, however, to draw reasonable inferences from the facts as they were presented to the Trial Examiner and as they are set forth by him in his 34-page Decision which was adopted by the Board.
The background of this matter is detailed with particularity in the 34 pages. Is there substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole to support the Board’s finding (1) that petitioner discharged employee Ralofsky to discourage membership in a union, and (2) that petitioner coercively interrogated employee Ralofsky about union activities? “The direction in which the law moves is often a guide for decision of particular cases, and here it serves to confirm our conclusion. However halting its progress, the trend in litigation is toward a rational inquiry into truth, in which the tribunal considers everything ‘logically probative of some matter requiring to be proved.’ ” Universal Camera Corp. v. N.L.R.B., supra, page 497, 71 S.Ct. page 469. Thanks to the detailed treatment given this matter by the Trial Examiner we are able to say that an attempt at a “rational inquiry into truth” convinces us that the facts as they appear in this record are not “logically probative” of the “matter requiring to be proved.” Substantial evidence does not appear in the record to support the Board's finding on either of the two alleged violations. The most that can be said on either score is that there is perhaps a scintilla of evidence in support of respondent’s rulings which, of course, will not suffice. Universal Camera Corp. v. N.L.R.B., supra. We are unable to construe the alleged interrogations as coercive. We are also unable to find a substantial basis for attributing the discharge of Ralofsky to an anti-union motivation. The record convinces us that the least persuasive ground of several possible ones for discharging Ralofsky is one related to union activities.
The petition to review and set aside the order of the Board is granted.

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: 1