opinion: Percy WHITE, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
  No. 78-1815.
  United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
  Submitted Dec. 13, 1978.
  Decided Dec. 18, 1978.
  Robert D. Kingsland, U. S. Atty., and Bruce D. White, Asst. U. S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., for appellee.
  Before HEANEY, ROSS and HENLEY, Circuit Judges.
  PER CURIAM.
  After an unsuccessful attempt to bring suit in the United States Supreme Court, plaintiff filed a virtually incomprehensible complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The complaint began, “No cooperative, COMPLAINT I give the nation, Ideas for economy come now Plaintiff, Percy White, and for his cause of action, States to the court: — A: criminal Act.” [sic] and wrongdoing.” At plaintiffs request counsel was appointed on June 6,1978, by United States District Judge James Meredith, but on July 18, 1978, Judge Meredith entered an order relieving appointed counsel.
  Additional documents, as incomprehensible as the original complaint, were filed by plaintiff and on October 23, 1978, the United States Attorney filed a motion to dismiss. United States District Judge H. Kenneth Wangelin issued an order October 31, 1978, granting the motion to dismiss pursuant to Rules 8(a) and 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In an accompanying memorandum Judge Wangelin wrote:
  Plaintiff’s complaint(s) is a wholly incomprehensible compilation of unrelated phrases, diatribes and ramblings. * *
  Nowhere in the documents is there anything even roughly approximating a short and plain statement of the claim, nor does it appear, even under the most liberal of standards, that the documents state a claim for which relief can be granted.
  Plaintiff filed a motion of appeal in this court and was granted leave by Judge Wangelin to proceed in forma pauperis. Both plaintiff’s motion of appeal and subsequent documents delivered by him to this court are further evidence of his inability to intelligibly present his claims.
  Pursuant to our Rule 9(a) we find this appeal to be frivolous and entirely without merit. The judgment of the trial court is affirmed for the reasons given by Judge Wangelin as set forth above.
  . The file contains the following letter from appointed counsel to plaintiff:
  June 26, 1978
  Dear Mr. White:
  It has been over one week since I wrote you concerning my inability to help you further with your case without factual information. I have spent a not insubstantial amount of time researching what appears to be your complaint, but I am unable to do-any more unless you contact me and provide me with the facts of your case. As I told you in my earlier letter, I met with Mr. Henry Voges at the St. Louis Civil Rights Enforcement Agency, but contrary to your suggestion, he was unable to furnish any information whatsoever to help me understand your case.
  Even though I met with you personally for approximately three hours after I was appointed to represent you in this case, I still have absolutely no understanding of the factual basis to your complaint. Please contact me so that 1 may help you.
  Louis F. Bonacorsi
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.