opinion: TOOBERT v. WOODS, Housing Expediter
  No. 12030.
  United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.
  May 7, 1949.
  George W. Downing, Jr., Los Angeles, Cal., for appellant.
  Ed Dupree, General Counsel, Office of Housing Expediter, Hugo V. Prucha, Asst. General Counsel, Benjamin I. Shulman, Special Lit. Attorney, Washington, D.C., for appellee.
  Before DENMAN, Chief Judge, and STEPHENS and BONE, Circuit Judges.
  DENMAN, Chief Judge.
  This is an appeal from a judgment in a suit brought by appellee restraining appellant from collecting over-ceiling rents from tenants of five rented areas belonging to appellant in the Los Angeles Defense Rental Area and ordering a restitution of rents previously collected in violation of the Emergency Price Control Act and the Housing and Rent Act of 1947, 50 U.S.C.A. Appendix, §§ 901 et seq., 1881 et seq.
  The district court found that appellant and one Hammond demanded and received the over-ceiling rents as “landlords” within rent regulations providing.
  “ ‘Landlord’ includes an owner, lessor, sublessor, assignee or other person receiving or entitled to receive rent for the use or occupancy of any housing accommodations, or an agent of any of the foregoing.” 10 F.R. 13528, and 12 F.R. 4331.
  Appellant concedes that he owned in fee these rented areas and that the rents collected on the five parcels by Hammond were over the ceiling provided by these acts. He contends that the tenants were not his tenants but of Hammond, who held the rented areas, first for a year under an oral contract of purchase of these five rented areas and two others, and second for the remaining period of about fourteen months under an oral lease; and that all the rents were collected by Hammond and none received by him and hence that he was not a “landlord” within the above regulations.
  The imcontradicted evidence is that such an oral contract of sale was made between appellant and Hammond by which Hammond was to purchase all the seven areas, the title to be in the name of Hammond’s wife, who was then in Texas. An agreement in writing was drawn and awaiting Mrs. Hammond’s signature. The property was insured against fire for the benefit of Mrs. Hammond, appellant and Hammond— clear evidence of a bonafide agreement of sale with Mrs. Hammond to obtain the title. On the total purchase price of $17,-500, $150 a month was paid by Hammond to appellant throughout the year.
  Hammond disputed a claim of appellant that, under the sales agreement, Hammond was responsible for certain insurance on the property. The agreement was rescinded and an oral lease to Hammond at $125 per month was substituted. Appellee ddes not contend that $125 per month is in excess of the prescribed maximum rentals for the seven rented parcels, appellee having proved only the maximum rentals on five of the parcels.
  The district court held this oral agreement of sale to be void. Its reasoning seems to be that since there was no contract of sale the appellant must be deemed to have received the rent of the buildings, though both Hammond and appellant testified to the contrary and no one of the tenants testifying states that he paid appellant anything. Continuing the reasoning seems to be that since such relationship of appellant with the tenants so began, it continued through the period of the oral lease.
  In holding the contract of sale was void under the California law, the district court erred. In California the oral agreement of sale, at all the pertinent times here, was valid between the parties. In O’Brien v. O’Brien, 197 Cal. 577, 586, 241 P. 861, 864, the Supreme Court of California states:
  “It is the general rule, however, that a contract falling within the operation of the statute, but made in contravention thereof, is not invalid in the sense that it is void. It is merely voidable. The statute is said to relate to the remedy only and not to affect the validity of the oral contract. ‘Such a contract, if otherwise valid, remains so, and the sole effect of the statute is to render it unenforceable by one party against the will of the other who abandons or repudiates it.’ ”
  And to the same effect, and explicitly holding that such a contract is not void, are: Ayoob, v. Ayoob, 74 Cal.App.2d 236, at 242, 168 P.2d 462; Thompson v. Schur-man, 65 Cal.App.2d 432, at 438, 150 P.2d 509; Taylor v. J. B. Hill Co., 67 Cal.App.2d 581, 154 P.2d 926.
  In Thompson v. Schurman, supra, as here, the vendee had paid part of the consideration on an oral contract for the sale of land. The vendee sued to recover the part payment, though the vendor had not repudiated the oral contract. The contract was held valid and the vendee not entitled to recover the part payment of the purchase price, the court stating, 65 Cal.App.2d at pages 437 and 438, 150 P.2d at page 512:
  “According to the great weight of authorities, including those found in the California jurisdiction, the vendee of real property under an oral contract which is within the statute of frauds may not recover partial payment of the purchase price which he has paid pursuant to the agreement, in the absence of fraud, while the vendor is ready, able and willing to fulfill the terms and conditions of the contract. Laffey v. Kaufman, 134 Cal. 391, 66 P. 471, 86 Am.St.Rep. 283; Walbridge v. Richards, 212 Cal. 408, 413, 298 P. 971; Kroger v. Baur, 46 Cal.App.2d 801, 117 P.2d 50; 12 Cal.Jur. 9Z2, sec. 92; 2 Williston on Contracts, Rev.Ed. 1562, sec. 538; 2 Restatement of the Law of Contracts, 618, sec. 355 [e]; 132 A.L.R. 1489, note; 27 Cal. Law Rev. 475. * * * ”
  With the burden of proof on the appellee, the record shows no evidence that appellant received anything other than the part of the purchase price paid by Hammond on the contract of sale and Hammond’s rental on the succeeding lease. We hold that appellant did not bear the relationship of landlord to the tenants within the above rent regulations.
  The judgment is reversed and the district court ordered to enter a judgment for appellant.
  Under See. 206(b) of the Housing and Rent Act of 1947.
instruction: 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.