opinion: Harold Heath HILL; Harold C. Hill; Fred C. Hill, Appellees, v. BASF WYANDOTTE CORPORATION, Appellant.
  No. 85-1162.
  United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
  Argued Dec. 5, 1985.
  Decided Feb. 13, 1986.
  Charles E. Carpenter, Jr. (R. Davis Howser, Richardson, Plowden, Grier & Howser on brief), for appellant.
  William P. Donelan, Jr. (Donelan & Donelan on brief), for appellees.
  Before SPROUSE and ERVIN, Circuit Judges, and MOTZ, United States District Judge for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.
  MOTZ, District Judge:
  This case has a long history. It involves damage to the 1977 soybean crop of Harold Heath Hill, Harold C. Hill and Fred C. Hill caused by the use of Basalin, a herbicide manufactured by BASF Wyandotte Corporation (“BWC”). The first trial resulted in the declaration of a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. A second trial resulted in a judgment in favor of the Hills in the amount of $207,725. On appeal, this Court reversed that judgment, holding that the district court erred (a) in ruling that an oral representation made by a sales agent of BWC constituted an express warranty, and (b) in not giving effect to a disclaimer of consequential damages made by BWC. Hill v. BASF Wyandotte Corp., 696 F.2d 287 (4th Cir.1982). We left open the question of how damages were to be measured. Id. at 292, n. 6.
  Upon remand the district court certified the question of the proper measure of damages to the South Carolina Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that the measure of damages in a case such as this is “the value ... [plaintiff s] crop would have had if the product [manufactured by defendant] had conformed to the warranty less the value of the crop actually produced, less the expense of preparing for market the portion of the probable crop prevented from maturing.” Hill v. BASF Wyandotte Corp., 280 S.C. 174, 311 S.E.2d 734, 736 (1984). The case was then retried, and the jury returned a verdict in the amount of $148,625 in favor of the Hills. This appeal followed. On this occasion we affirm.
  BWC first argues that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the jury’s finding that the Basalin used by the Hills was defective. The standards governing sufficiency of the evidence questions have recently been recited by this court. See Whalen v. Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, 769 F.2d 221 (4th Cir.1985). “[W]hen a jury is called upon to determine causation, the inferences it draws to reach its verdict must be reasonably probable; mere speculation is insufficient.” Id. at 224 (citing Lovelace v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 681 F.2d 230, 241-42 (4th Cir.1982)). However, the court may not pass on the credibility of witnesses or substitute its judgment of the facts for that of the jury. Ralston Purina Co. v. Edmunds, 241 F.2d 164, 167 (4th Cir.1957). The party whose evidence is challenged must be given the benefit of all reasonable inferences from the evidence. Id.; see also Abasiekong v. City of Shelby, 744 F.2d 1055, 1059 (4th Cir.1984); 9 Wright and Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, Section 2524 at 543-45 (1971).
  In this case the evidence that the Basalin was defective was circumstantial. It was, however, sufficiently probative. The Hills demonstrated, by way of testimony, documentary evidence and aerial photographs, that they had different yields from different soybean fields on their farm even though the fields were both planted, cultivated and harvested in the same manner. One portion of the fields was treated with Basalin, the other with Treflan, another herbicide. The varieties of the beans planted in the fields were the same and weather conditions were comparable. Further, the Basalin was shown to have been applied correctly and the farming methods used on the different fields were the same. The Hills’ evidence also demonstrated why they were unable to produce at trial a sample of the Basalin in order to prove that its chemical properties might not have been as warranted by BWC. The can containing the Basalin had been buried underground after it was applied in accordance with BWC’s own instructions on the label.
  BWC next argues that the evidence was insufficient to support an award of damages. This argument is equally unavailing. Harold Heath Hill testified as to the number of bushels of soybeans which he estimated were lost because of the use of the Basalin. John W. Riser, the County Extension Agent for Richland County, confirmed that an experienced farmer such as H.H. Hill could reasonably estimate the probable yield of his crops by surveying them. H.H. Hill also testified to the price which the Hills would have received from the sale of the soybeans destroyed by the Basalin and to the difference in price which the Hills received from soybeans grown in the Basalin fields which were harvested but were of a lesser quality than the beans harvested from the Treflan fields. Finally, he testified as to the cost which the Hills would have had to incur to prepare for market the soybeans destroyed by the use of the Basalin. In sum, H.H. Hill’s testimony addressed each of the elements of the measure of damages enunciated by the South Carolina Supreme Court in response to the question certified to it by the district court. He was subjected to close cross-examination on all of the matters as to which he testified, and the verdict — which was in a precise dollar amount substantially less than the Hills requested — demonstrated that the jury independently and carefully evaluated the evidence.
  BWC finally contends that the district court erred in permitting Harold C. Hill and Fred Hill to be joined as plaintiffs after the evidence was closed. The reason for their joinder was that they owned part of the acreage on the Hill farm. From the outset of this protracted litigation it has been known that the farming of the Hills’ land was a family operation, managed by Harold Heath Hill. He was the one responsible for actually running the farm, and he had all of the contacts with the representatives of BWC. When he instituted this suit, he obviously did so on behalf of his father and his brother as well as himself. There can be no question from the evidence that they were fully aware of his actions and that they ratified them.
  No unfair prejudice resulted to BWC from the joinder. BWC was aware long before trial of the precise ownership interests of each of the Hills in the fields in question. The addition of H.C. Hill and Fred Hill as plaintiffs simply conformed the pleadings to the evidence in accord with the spirit and the letter of Rules 15 and 17 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See, e.g., Hess v. Eddy, 689 F.2d 977 (11th Cir.1982); 6 Wright and Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, Section 1541 at 637 (1971);. cf. Leachman v. Beech Aircraft Corp., 694 F.2d 1301, 1309 (D.C.Cir. 1982); Campus Sweater & Sportswear v. M.B. Kahn Construction Co., 515 F.Supp. 64 (D.C.S.C.1979), aff'd 644 F.2d 877 (4th Cir.1981). The joinder was therefore proper:
  AFFIRMED.
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.