opinion: UNITED STATES v. HICKMAN et al.
  No. 8888.
  Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
  June 11, 1946.
  J. Albert Woll, U. S. Atty., and John Peter Lulinski and Kenneth S. Nathan, Asst. U. S. Attys., all of Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
  Henry L. Balaban, of Chicago, Ill., for appellee.
  Before MAJOR, KERNER, and MIN-TON, Circuit Judges.
  KERNER, Circuit Judge.
  Defendants, Hickman as principal and Parker as surety, executed a recognizance bond before a United States Commissioner, conditioned upon the appearance of the principal on April 3, 1945, in connection with a violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 408e. The recognizance bond contained the usüal provisions for judgment by confession in the event of default. Hickman failed to appear. The Commissioner entered an order forfeiting the bond and on April 6, 1945, a judgment was entered against defendants for $2,500, the penalty of the bond and costs. April 18, 1945, Hickman was apprehended by the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Kansas City, Missouri. April 24, 1945, the surety filed a petition to vacate and set aside the judgment. Plaintiff answered, opposing the granting of the petition on the ground that Hickman’s failure to appear was willful. A hearing was had, and the court entered an order vacating and setting aside the judgment. To reverse the order, plaintiff appeals.
  The purpose of a recognizance bond is to secure the presence of the defendant and to that obligation the surety knowingly binds himself. By the terms of a recognizance bond the defendant agrees to “appear for judgment,” Continental Casualty Co. v. United States, 314 U.S. 527, 530, 62 S.Ct. 393, 86 L.Ed. 426, and if the condition of the bail bond is broken by the failure of the principal to appear, the surety becomes the absolute debtor of the United States for the amount of the penalty. United States v. Mack, 295 U.S. 480, 488, 55 S.Ct. 813, 79 L.Ed. 1559. The Remission of Penalty of Recognizance Statute, 18 U.S.C.A. § 601, restricts the power of courts to relieve a defaulting defendant from the penalty of a bond which has been breached, and controls the circumstances under which the court may remit a recognizance bond. It provides that the court may, in its discretion, remit the whole or any part of a penalty whenever it appears “there has been no willful default of the party.” Under this statute, jurisdiction to grant remission is conditioned upon certain prerequisites, the first of which is the showing of no willful default on the part of the principal in the bond. United States v. Capua, 7 Cir., 94 F.2d 292. Remission, however, is not a matter of right and the court’s discretion is not unlimited. United States v. Reed, 5 Cir., 117 F.2d 808. The burden is not upon the plaintiff to show that the default was willful, but upon the defendant to show that it was not willful, United States v. Costello, 6 Cir., 47 F.2d 684, and United States v. Nordenholz, 4 Cir., 95 F.2d 756, 758. In other words, if there is a willful default by the principal, the court may not grant relief to the surety. United States v. Capua, supra, 94 F.2d 294. And in considering whether the default was willful, the aid and assistance of the surety, his diligence, his good faith, or the apprehension of the principal, are immaterial, United States v. Rosenfeld, 8 Cir., 109 F.2d 908, 910, and until the statute is satisfied that the default was not willful, no discretion is vested in the court and it has no jurisdiction to remit the penalty, United States v. Reed, supra, 117 F.2d 809.
  In the order setting aside the judgment, the cou'rt found that when the case was called before the United States Commissioner, certain police officers of the city of Chicago were on hand to apprehend Hickman for an assault by Hickman upon his wife; that the surety asked the Commissioner to enter a forfeiture “so he could apprehend the said James Hickman personally”; that the surety laid aside all other business and concentrated on the apprehension of Hickman; that he paid $500 for information, which information he gave to the Federal Bureau of Investigation; that he personally made two trips to Kansas City, Missouri, in connection with the apprehension of Hickman; and that Hickman was arrested by the joint efforts of the surety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Based upon these facts, the court concluded that Hickman’s default was not willful.
  In the state of this record it is not clear that the court found as a fact that Hickman’s default was not willful, but if we assume that the court found that the default was not willful, our examination of the record has convinced us that such a finding is not supported by the evidence, and is therefor clearly erroneous.
  The order of the District Court is reversed.
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.