Task: songer_numappel

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 specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case. 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.

YAN ORSDEL, Associate Justice.
This appeal is from the Commissioner of Patents in an interference proceeding, in which the issue is stated in a single count as follows:
“For hermetically sealing substances, the combination of a receptacle having on its exterior below the rim an upwardly facing shoulder that inclines outward at less than right angles to the exterior wall of the rim, a rectangular elastic gasket located on said shoulder, and a cap having a downward and outward flaring skirt with the inner wall of the flaring portion of said skirt shaped to engage the upper and outer angle of said gasket and - force the gasket diagonally to its seat on said shoulder when the cap is held down by exterior air pressure.”
This count is claim 2 of a patent issued to Robinson on July 13,1920. Davis copied the claim from the Robinson patent into his application, which was not filed until March 20, 1922, or about 20 months' after ■ the issue of the Robinson patent. The case turns wholly on issues of fact, and under the rule of evidence applied in such eases a' heavy burden is placed upon Davis in proving priority.
The record is a rather interesting one, and we have examined it with care, supplemented by the able briefs of counsel. In the elaborate opinions of the various tribunals of the Patent Office, the case has been reviewed at length, and in each instance priority was awarded to Davis. While the case is a close one, in view of a question of originality involved, we are of opinion that the conclusion thus reached is correct.
Inasmuch as the testimony has been reviewed in detail by the tribunals below, and especially in the able opinion rendered by the Board of Examiners in Chief, in which we fully concur, further consideration' here would amount merely to repetition.'
The decision of the Commissioner is affirmed.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 1