opinion: In the Matter of Joseph N. TAUBER, Appellant, v. Honorable Walter A. GORDON.
  No. 14896.
  United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.
  Reargued May 25, 1965.
  Decided July 30, 1965.
  Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., Washington, D. C., for appellant on rehearing.
  Almeric L. Christian, U. S. Atty., Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, V. I., for appellee on rehearing.
  Before BIGGS, Chief Judge, and McLAUGHLIN, KALODNER, STALEY, HASTIE, GANEY, SMITH and FREEDMAN, Circuit Judges.
  PER CURIAM:
  During the course of the trial of a civil tax controversy in the District Court of the Virgin Islands, the court cited the appellant, an Assistant Attorney General who was trying the case for the Government of the Virgin Islands, for criminal contempt and summarily fined him $100. The entire procedure of citation and summary conviction appears in the verbatim transcript of the proceedings immediately before and immediately after the court reconvened following an off-the-record discussion in chambers:
  “IN * * * CHAMBERS”
  “Court: Let the record show that the Government wanted to call Mr. Charles Haim back on the stand as an adverse party and the Court refused on the grounds that he was on the witness stand for three and a half hours on cross-examination and he’s a sick man — very elderly, and has had a stroke and had to go to the Doctor as reported to the Court, and I’m not going to allow him to be called back to the stand.
  “IN OPEN COURT”
  “Mr. Tauber: I must make a request to the Court that in view of what happened in Chambers, I personally would like to request to seek the assistance of counsel for myself because of the contempt threat that was placed on my head in chambers and not in open court.
  “Court: I’m placing it right here in open court. If you keep on talking I’ll fine you for contempt of court right now. In the first place, that was a private thing in there and it was perfectly friendly until you just kept talking and now you come out here — .
  “Mr. Tauber: (Interposing) Something was put on the record, your Honor.
  “Court: There was nothing put on the record.
  “Mr. Tauber: About Mr. Haim not taking the stand.
  “Court: Mr. Tauber, Counsel asked that we go into private chambers and discuss something and I told you when we left there that we could put on the record that Mr. Charles Haim was not going to be permitted to go on the stand.
  “You have deliberately come out here and started another argument.
  “I’m going to fine you one hundred dollars ($100.00) for contempt of court. Let the record so show.
  “Mr. Tauber: For the reason that I came out here and — .
  “Court: I said one hundred dollars for contempt of court. It’s through your conduct all the way through this trial. This is not the first. It just culminated in your deliberately coming out here after the meeting in chambers and starting to discuss something.
  “Mr. Tauber: I requested only the assistance of counsel.
  “Court: I know what you’ve done and I’m fining you one hundred dollars.
  “Mr. Tauber: May I request your Honor to stay the fine for appeal ?
  “Court: No, I’m not going to stay it. Go on with your case.”
  Subsequently the court made its disposition of the matter more formal in an order which recited that “throughout the trial of the case * * * Joseph N. Tauber continuously objected to and commented upon the rulings of the Court after said rulings had been made” and “had been constantly admonished by the Court that his action bordered on contempt”. The order also referred to the episode of attempted disclosure of confidential matter, which we have set out above as it appears in the record, as the culmination of Tauber’s improper course of conduct.
  Tauber appealed from that order and a divided panel of this court affirmed the district court’s action. Thereafter, we granted the present rehearing before the court en banc.
  It will be observed that the district court has identified with particularity only one occasion upon which Tauber’s conduct was deemed contemptuous. We have quoted in full the transcript of what occurred then. We are unable to read anything that Tauber said at that time as an attempt to disclose in open court any confidential matter that had been discussed in chambers. If the conviction depends upon contemptuous behavior on that occasion, the record does not support it.
  On the other hand, the formal contempt order states as a further reason for holding Tauber in contempt the fact that “throughout the trial” he “continuously objected to and commented on the rulings of the court after said rulings had been made”. But beyond this general assertion the court did not specify the items or occasions of misbehavior which it deemed serious enough, individually or cumulatively, to merit punishment as contempt. Such a general characterization of behavior over a seven day trial period is not specific enough to satisfy the requirement of Rule 42(a) of the Rules of Criminal Procedure that a summary “order of contempt shall recite the facts * * See Parmelee Transportation Co. v. Keeshin, 7th Cir. 1961, 294 F.2d 310, 314-315. This requirement is more than a formality. It is essential to disclosure of the basis of decision with sufficient particularity to permit informed appellate review.
  In this case, the district attorney, who ably discharged his responsibility to support the contempt order on this appeal despite the fact that he did not participate in the proceedings in the district court, attempted to give specific meaning to the general language of the contempt order by culling from the record and presenting to this court all of the episodes of questionable conduct by Tauber and contention between court and counsel which the court may have had in mind. Certainly the episodes thus brought to our attention disclose peevish and unduly persistent disputation, as well as several acts, equivocal and difficult to characterize on the paper record, which as they occurred might have impressed the trial judge as deliberately disruptive of orderly trial. But counsel’s enumeration of occurrences which, in his view after the event, afforded a proper basis for a contempt order cannot be substituted for the required specification by the trial judge of the facts upon which he actually predicated his contempt order.
  Though we have no doubt that the district court was subjected, as courts often are, to considerable vexation, we con-elude that appellant’s conduct during the episode immediately after the conference in chambers was not contemptuous and that the court has not adequately specified any other acts of a contemptuous nature. For these reasons this summary conviction must be set aside.
  It will be so ordered.
  . The dissenting opinion is mistaken in its assertion that “ [t] his court refuses to read that record and simply closes its eyes to every occurrence other than the single one noted in the majority opinion”. We are painfully aware of all that the record discloses, including such unpleasantries as are mentioned hereafter in footnote 2. It is in the light of that awareness that we are convinced that a contempt conviction, based on one specification of conduct that, on review, appears not to have been contemptuous, and a generalized reference without specification to a course of conduct throughout trial, cannot be sustained. A criminal contempt order like any other conviction of crime must stand or fall on the sufii-ciency of the specification of wrongdoing upon which it is based.
  . The dissenting opinion asserts that during the troubled course of this trial “the court was most patient in dealing with the attorney”. No doubt the court was provoked by the attorney’s persistence in arguing after rulings had been made. However, as human beings, judges sometime react to vexation with retorts and a show of irritation that are both provoked and provoking. So, in this case at one point counsel argued that in the circumstances the court did not have “the power to order a [tax] refund”, and the court retorted: “The only thing I have the power to do is whatever I choose to do.” On another occasion, upon the completion of the examination of a witness shortly before midday, the following colloquy occurred :
  “Mr. Tauber: Your Honor, may I ask if your Honor plans to recess at 12 because—
  “Court: I’ll run the court.
  “Mr. Tauber: I’m only asking your Honor—
  “Court: I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do.
  “Mr. Tauber: I only asked your Honor a question.
  “Court: I know what you asked. You didn’t have any business asking it in the first place.”
  It is also apparent that throughout the trial the court was greatly displeased that counsel insisted upon making offers of proof when the court sustained objections to proffered testimony. In response to one such offer of proof the court stated “I do not like that particular style of doing things * * * to tell me after I made a ruling that you want to make an offer of proof and put it in the record * * One subsequent offer was cut off with the warning: “If you keep on, I’m going to sit you down and call off your examination.”
  Such instances could be multiplied. We cite them simply to make the point that, contrary to the intimation of the dissenters, the entire course of this trial was marked by exchanges between court and counsel that were heated and acrimonious on both sides.
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