Task: songer_r_fed

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 respondents in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

PER CURIAM:
This appeal arises in a Federal court suit brought in 1978 by nearly 100 property owners or residents (plaintiffs) in the Abbs Valley Community of Tazewell County, Virginia, with private water supply systems approved by the State Water Authority, against the members of the Tazewell County Water and Sewage Authority and the Board of Supervisors of the County (defendants) to enjoin them from requiring plaintiffs to connect to a public water system at their own expense and also preventing them from using their existing water sources.
Plaintiffs declared on the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, charging that the mandatory connection eliminates competition from private .sources. They also complained that the State statute’s exaction that they join in the water service and abandon their own potable water wells and springs is a “taking” of their property, without just compensation, and so is invasive of their Constitutional protections.
Responding, defendants first pleaded to the jurisdiction on a catholicity of grounds including: (1) the Johnson Act barring the suit as one involving “an order affecting rates . . . (2) the doctrine of comity, alleging it dictated abstention by the Federal court here, because the State’s internal administrative regulation is in issue; and (3) lack of justiciability, maintaining that the action was premature and unripe since the water project had not been completed. The principal defense to the claim of taking without just compensation was that the ordinance is a reasonable exercise of police power and compensation is, therefore, unnecessary.
Upon a comprehensive consideration of each issue tendered by these contentions and upon apt invocation of unquestionable principle and precedent, the Court accepted jurisdiction but dismissed the action on the merits. We affirm on the District Judge’s opinion. Shrader v. Horton, 471 F.Supp. 1236 (W.D.Va.1979).
Affirmed.
. Va. Code § 15.1-1261 (Repl.Vol.1973) reads as follows:
Water and sewer connections. — Upon the acquisition or construction of any water system or sewer system under the provisions of this chapter, the owner, tenant, or occupant of each lot or parcel of land which abuts upon a street or other public way containing a water main or a water system, a sanitary sewer which is a part of or which is served or may be served by such sewer system and upon which lot or parcel a building shall have been constructed for residential, commercial or industrial use, shall, if so required by the rules and regulations or a resolution of the authority, with concurrence of such local government, municipality, or county that may be involved, connect such building with such water main or sanitary sewer, and shall cease to use any other source of water supply for domestic use or any other method for the disposal of sewage, sewage waste or other polluting matter. All such connections shall be made in accordance with rules and regulations which shall be adopted from time to time by the authority, which rules and regulations may provide for a charge for making any such connection in such reasonable amount as the authority may fix and establish.
. 15 U.S.C. §§ 51, 2 and 8.
. The District Court found that the State action immunity doctrine of Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341, 63 S.Ct. 307, 87 L.Ed. 315 (1943), controlled, rendering defendants immune from the antitrust claims because of the State policy to provide monopoly public water service under Va. Code § 15.1-1261. Shrader v. Horton, 471 F.Supp. 1236 (W.D.Va.1979). The antitrust question has not been raised on appeal.
. The Johnson Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1342 (1948), provides:
The district courts shall not enjoin, suspend or restrain the operation of, or compliance with, any order affecting rates chargeable by a public utility and made by a State administrative agency or a rate-making body of a State political subdivision, where:
(1) Jurisdiction is based solely on diversity of citizenship or repugnance of the order to the Federal Constitution; and,
(2) The order does not interfere with interstate commerce; and,
(3) The order has been made after reasonable notice and hearing; and,
(4) A plain, speedy and efficient remedy may be had in the courts of such State.
. Since the District Court decision was rendered, the Virginia statute, § 15.1-1261, supra, was amended April 3, 1980 to read as follows:
Water and sewer connections. — Upon the acquisition or construction of any water system or sewer system under the provisions of this chapter, the owner, tenant, or occupant of each lot or parcel of land which abuts upon a street or other public way containing a water main or a water system, a sanitary sewer which is a part of or which is served or may be served by such sewer system and upon which lot or parcel a building shall have been constructed for residential, commercial or industrial use, shall, if so required by the rules and regulations or a resolution of the authority, with concurrence of such local government, municipality, or county that may be involved, connect such building with such water main or sanitary sewer, and shall cease to use any other source of water supply for domestic use or any other method for the disposal of sewage, sewage waste or other polluting matter. All such connections shall be made in accordance with rules and regulations which shall be adopted from time to time by the authority, which rules and regulations may provide for a charge for making any such connection in such reasonable amount as the authority may fix and establish.
Provided, however, notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, those persons having a domestic supply or source of potable water shall not be required to discontinue the use of same, but may be required to pay a connection fee, a front footage fee, and a monthly nonuser service charge that shall not be more than that proportion of the minimum monthly user charge as debt service compares to the total operating and debt service costs. Such fees and charges may not be less than any monthly nonuser fee or service charge being charged by any county, city or town in which the authority operates.
Inasmuch as the amendment does not affect the outcome of the present case, no discussion of it is requisite.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officialss"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 0