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.

PER CURIAM.
Judge Rayfiel has stated the facts very fully and we cannot see the necessity of a detailed repetition of them. He correctly says that the solution of this controversy can best be found by deciding where the collision took place between the motor car and the truck. He fixed it “at a point some 40 feet east thereof”: i. e. 40 feet “east of the west boundary of the northbound lane of Third Avenue.” If so, the truck had very nearly passed across the northbound lane whose width is 63 feet.
The plaintiff claims to have proved contributory negligence because the truck driver did not see the motor car coming up the north lane, which must have been in plain sight had he looked to the right after he passed the “stop signal,” and before he had himself entered the north lane. That is true, but it does not necessarily prove that the postal truck was at fault. The case falls within § 1142 of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Law, McKinney’s Consol.Laws, c. 71 which sets the duty of a driver “approaching a stop sign,” as the driver of the postal truck had done. He is to “yield the right of way to any vehicle which has entered the intersection from another highway or which is approaching so closely on said highway as to constitute an immediate hazard, but said driver having so yielded may proceed.” With this section we are to read § 1140(b): “When two vehicles enter an intersection from different highways at approximately the same time the driver * * * on the left shall yield the right of way to the vehicle on the right.”
In the case at bar the only testimony was that the speed of the postal truck was not over five miles an hour while crossing the north lane of Third Avenue, and that the speed of the motor car was over twenty-five miles an hour. As we have said, the truck had crossed 40 of the 63 feet of the north lane. If so, it follows that when the two cars came within sight of each other the motor car was moving four or five times as fast as the truck and was not an “immediate ha2;ard.” The truck’s driver having stopped at the sign was entitled to “proceed.” Plainly § 1140(b) did not apply for the two cars could not have entered the “intersection from different highways at approximately the same time,” and the motor car should have yielded the right of way to the postal truck which had already “entered the intersection.” § 1140(a).
Judgment affirmed.

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

Answer: 1