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.
This appeal raises no other questions than those which we dealt with in Manhattan Properties, Inc., v. Irving Trust Co., 66 F.(2d) 470, and Malavazos v. Irving Trust Co., 66 F.(2d) 482, except that here we must consider a point of Virginia law. The lessors, who are the claimants, assert that hy the law of that state when a lessee repudiates the lease, the lessor may sell the term and sue at once for liquidated damages; by which we mean the difference between the discounted future rents and the value of the term as realized. The claimants did not indeed take that course here; rather they procured from a Virginia court a receiver who is collecting the rents for the interest of whom it may concern. But their position is that the bankruptcy court may sell the term in their stead by way of liquidating the claim, and offset the sum received against the discounted future rents. We are not clear that under James v. Kibler’s Adm’r, 94 Va. 165, 26 S. E. 417, this course is open to a lessor; that is, whether he must not himself resell the term upon the lessee’s repudiation. However, we shall assume that he may leave the sale to the court, if he positively elects to pursue that remedy; just as we assume that the bankruptcy is a repudiation of the lease by the lessee. We have never held that the lessor would not have a provable claim in bankruptcy in case the lease contained a covenant that upon repudiation the lessee would pay the discounted future rents, less the present value of the term. In re Roth & Appel (C. C. A. 2) 181 F. 667, 31 L. R. A. (N. S.) 270, did not touch such a covenant; though the lessee had promised to pay the difference between the rent reserved as it fell due, and the rente received by the lessor on any reletting. We thought such a claim too contingent,' because each payment was conditional upon the continuance of the term, and the- covenant was as little absolute as the prime covenant to pay the rents. A covenant to pay at once the discounted rent would not be so conditioned; it would be, in substance, a covenant for liquidated damages, as we have already called it; and we reserve its provability. Arguendo we will assume that it would be provable.
In James v. Kibler’s Adm’r, supra, 94 Va. 165, 26 S. E. 417, the lessor was allowed to recover without such a covenant in the lease; the remedy was the same as though it had existed. If the lessee had entered, we should have to decide the question we have just reserved. However, he had not, and that was expressly mentioned as an important, if not controlling, circumstance; the situation was treated as an ordinary breach of contract. In Crowder v. Virginia Bank of Commerce, 127 Va. 299, 103 S. E. 578, the lessee had entered and the lessor had not resold the term. The lessee urged this as an excuse when the lessor sued for the full rent, his theory being that by neglecting to sell the lessor had failed in his duty to minimize his damages. This the court answered by distinguishing between the repudiation of a contract to lease and of the lease itself ; in the first the lessor must minimize damages, in the second he may let the rent roll up and sue for it. The last was a doctrine of real property, different from that applicable to contráete generally. Of course, it would be possible to say that the lessor has such a remedy after entry, but that for especial reasons he need not use it; it is possible to lay down any rule whatever. But at least the distinction made in Crowder v. Virginia Bank of Commerce leaves us doubtful whether the circumstances that in James v. Kibler’s Adm’r, supra, 94 Va. 165, 26 S. E. 417, the term had not begun, may not have been the controlling factor. Certainly no such remedy was known to the common law in the absence of specific covenant. Branning Mfg. Co. v. Norfolk-Southern R. Co., 138 Va. 43, 121 S. E. 74, again concerned a lease in which the term had not begun; it adds nothing to James v. Kibler. Cook v. Payne, unreported, was merely a refusal without opinion to entertain an appeal; we have no means of knowing what were the court’s reasons; certainly they may have been other than what the claimants here assume. Our conclusion is that the law of Virginia has not been shown to vary from the common law, and that In re Roth & Appel, supra, 181 F. 667, 31 L. R. A. (N. S.) 270, rules this appeal.
The order is affirmed, but if the appellants wish the mandate will be held up until the decision of the Supreme Court on the main issues now pending before it on certiorari.

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

Answer: 99