opinion: Lydia ANDERSON, Appellant, v. Bobbie C. PINKETT, Administratrix of the Estate of John R. Pinkett, Jr., Deceased.
  No. 23977.
  United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
  Argued Dec. 17, 1970.
  Decided Jan. 20, 1971.
  Mr. DeLong Harris, Washington, D. C., for appellant.
  Mr. David Huddle, Washington, D. C., for appellee.
  Before McGOWAN and TAMM, Circuit Judges, and SMITH, Chief District Judge for the District of Montana.
  Sitting by designation pursuant to Title 28 U.S.Code, Section 292(c).
  PER CURIAM:
  This appeal is from the dismissal of a complaint by the District Court on the grounds of collateral estoppel and, alternatively, res judicata. Appellant by that complaint sought to establish a resulting trust in respect of a sum of money held by appellee as administratrix of her husband’s estate.
  In an earlier proceeding with the District Court sitting in probate, appellee had filed a petition asking approval of the transfer of the money to appellant as the rightful owner thereof. The petition alleged that the money had come to the estate by reason of the fact that the decedent was the straw owner of certain race horses which in fact belonged to appellant. Objections were filed by creditors of the estate to this transfer, raising a preliminary issue as to the jurisdiction of the probate court to try title to personal property. The District Court disallowed the jurisdictional objection upon the authority of Price v. William, 129 U.S.App.D.C. 239, 393 F.2d 348 (1968); and went on to rule that there was no credible evidence supporting the petition on its merits. In its memorandum opinion withholding approval of the proposed transfer, the court referred to appellant as “left, without prejudice, to whatever other remedy she might have in the circumstances.”
  Encouraged by this last, appellant brought the present suit. It came before the same judge on appellee’s motion for judgment on the pleadings or, alternatively, for summary judgment. The court ruled that the evidence proffered in support of the complaint “fails to add anything of a significant character which would warrant a change in the findings and that the present action merely parallels the relief sought previously and re-litigates the same issue in the previous proceeding.” Thus, said the court, either collateral estoppel or res judicata stood in appellant’s way.
  In our view of the matter, however, the District Court sitting in probate was without jurisdiction to decide the merits of the question of whether title to the horses resided in the decedent or in appellant. Price v. Williams, supra, which the probate court pointed to as its authority for reaching the merits, dealt only with the question, arising in somewhat unusual circumstances, of whether conservators were éntitled to the physical possession of a will allegedly executed by their ward. It cannot, without more, be taken as an authoritative abandonment of the long-established doctrine in this jurisdiction that the modes of proceeding of the probate court make it an inappropriate forum for the resolution of conflicts over title to property, and one which is, in any event, not statutorily endowed with such authority. See Jones v. Dunlap, 73 App.D.C. 59, 115 F.2d 689 (1940). The court being without jurisdiction to deal with the merits in the earlier proceeding, its decision on that occasion can hardly bar appellant from bringing the present suit.
  The judgment appealed from is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent herewith.
  It is so ordered.
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.
  Your task is to identify the state of the first listed state or local government agency that is an appellant.
choices: not Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachussets Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New New New New North North Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode South South Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Wisconsin Wyoming Virgin Puerto District Guam not Panama