opinion: Stephen STACKHOUSE, Appellant, v. Joseph MAZURKIEWICZ, Warden; Sgt. Knepp, C.O. II; William Quick, C.O. I; D.A. Leathers, C.O. III; A. Anderson, C.O. I; Jesse Rush, IV, C.O. II; Tim Yutzy, C.O. Work Boss; Kunes C.O. Work Boss; Carrie Fromm, Institutional Psychologist; Rodriguez, C.O. I.
  No. 91-5239.
  United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
  Submitted under Third Circuit Rule 12(6) Sept. 13, 1991.
  Decided Dec. 11, 1991.
  Rehearing Denied Jan. 9, 1992.
  Stephen Stackhouse, pro se.
  Ernest D. Preate, Jr., Atty. Gen., Linda C. Barrett, Deputy Atty. Gen., Calvin R. Koons, Senior Deputy Atty. Gen., John G. Knorr, III, Chief Deputy Atty. Gen., Chief, Litigation Section, Office of Atty. Gen., Harrisburg, Pa., for appellees.
  Before SLOVITER, Chief Judge, and GREENBERG and COWEN, Circuit Judges.
  OPINION OF THE COURT
  GREENBERG, Circuit Judge.
  Appellant Stephen Stackhouse, a former Pennsylvania state prisoner at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview, brought a civil rights action in the district court against various prison officials. His complaint raised numerous claims which we need not describe in detail. We simply point out that in general they assert that he was denied due process of law in disciplinary proceedings and that he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The defendants filed motions for summary judgment and for dismissal to which Stack-house did not respond as required by Middle District Rule 401.6. Consequently, the magistrate judge filed a report and recommendation that the motion to dismiss be granted and the district court by order of February 13, 1991, adopted the report and recommendation and dismissed the action. Neither the magistrate judge nor the court addressed the merits of the complaint. Stackhouse appeals.
  While we are not unmindful of the problems of the district court in dealing with a large volume of litigation, we nevertheless conclude that under Anchorage Associates v. Virgin Islands Board of Tax Review, 922 F.2d 168 (3d Cir.1990), this action should not have been dismissed solely on the basis of the local rule without any analysis of whether the complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, as provided in Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Local Rule 401.6 should be understood to facilitate the court’s disposition of motions rather than to impose a sanction for failure to prosecute or defend. Anchorage Associates, 922 F.2d at 174. In a similar situation involving a local rule in Anchorage Associates, we held that a district court should not have granted summary judgment solely on the basis that a motion for summary judgment was not opposed.
  While we acknowledge that Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) has no analog to the provision in Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e), that if the adverse party does not respond to a motion for summary judgment the motion may be granted “if appropriate,” we do not think that this distinguishes the rules for present purposes. The fact is that if a motion to dismiss is granted solely because it has not been opposed, the case is simply not being dismissed because the complaint has failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Rather, it is dismissed as a sanction for failure to comply with the local court rule.
  In reaching our result, we do not suggest that the district court may never rely on the local rule to treat a motion to dismiss as unopposed and subject to a dismissal without a merits analysis. There may be some cases where the failure of a party to oppose a motion will indicate that the motion is in fact not opposed, particularly if the party is represented by an attorney and in that situation the rule may be appropriately invoked. Nor do we suggest that if a party fails to comply with the rule after a specific direction to comply from the court, the rule cannot be invoked. Thus, our holding is not broad.
  We realize, of course, that we could make our own analysis of the complaint and, if we found that it failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, we could affirm on that basis. In fact we have done that and, while we are reluctant to comment on the merits of the case in its current posture, have concluded that it is possible that some aspects of the complaint might survive a motion to dismiss if addressed on the merits. In these circumstances, we conclude that the complaint should in the first instance be considered substantively by the district court.
  The order of February 13, 1991, will be reversed and the matter will be remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The parties will bear their own costs on this appeal.
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.