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 appellants 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 appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
WOODS, Housing Expediter, v. MALCOLM-DALLYN CO. et al.
No. 14008.
United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.
Nov. 3, 1949.
Rehearing Denied Dec. 12, 1949.
Hugo V. Prucha, Assistant General Counsel, Office of Housing Expediter, Washington, D. C. (Ed Dupree, General Counsel, Office of Housing Expediter, and Louise F. McCarthy, Special Litigation Attorney, Office of the Housing Expediter, Washington, D. C, on the brief), for appellant.
Curtis Bush, Davenport, Iowa (A. G. Bush, Davenport, Iowa, on the brief), for appellees.
Before GARDNER, Chief Judge, and WOODBROUGH and COLLET, Circuit Judges.
GARDNER, Chief Judge.
This is an appeal from a judgment of dismissal in an action brought by appellant against appellees pursuant to Section 206 (b) of the Housing and Rent Act of 1947 as amended, Public Law 31, 81st Congress, 1st Session, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 1881 et seq., for an injunction restraining appellees from violating the provisions of said Act, particularly Section 209(a) thereof, and the Controlled Housing Rent Regulation issued thereunder.
Appellee Malcolm-Dallyn Company owns seven housing accommodations known as the Breezy Point Apartments in Clinton, Iowa. Appellee O. D. Collis is the manager and president of the company. The housing accommodations involved are within the Savanna-Clinton Defense-Rental Area. In December, 1948, appellees served notice on their tenants to vacate the Breezy Point housing accommodations. The ground stated in the notice was the withdrawal of the accommodations from the rental market and the tenants were advised that the housing accommodations would be sold as a cooperative.
Appellant’s complaint alleged the foregoing facts and alleged that none of the tenants desired to purchase the housing accommodations as a cooperative venture; that the appellees’ actions were violative of Section 209(a) of the Housing and Rent Act of 1947 as amended, for the reason that the defendants were not in good faith seeking to withdraw the accommodations from the rental market within the meaning and intent of the Act. The complaint, as has been observed, asked for a preliminary and final injunction enjoining the defendants therein named from evicting the tenants. A temporary injunction was granted.
The parties stipulated as to most of the facts. In this stipulation it is recited that, “By his paragraph 15 of his complaint as amended, the plaintiff did not mean that as a matter of fact the defendants were not in good faith seeking to withdraw the housing accommodations from the rental market.”
The matter was submitted to the court for final determination and the court in its opinion stated that, “The proceeding here is to determine whether plaintiff is entitled to his permanent injunction, or, the case be dismissed on its merits.”
The gist of plaintiff’s contention was that the defendants were not entitled to evict their tenants unless a certificate permitting such eviction were issued by the Housing Expediter. The court expressed the view that the Act as amended did not authorize the making of any order or regulation preventing a landlord from evicting tenants when he is acting in good faith and under the provisions of Section 209 of the Act of 1947 as amended by the Act of 1948. The court accordingly found that the action of the defendants in serving notice of eviction on the ground that they intended to withdraw the property from rental accommodations was in good faith and concluded that defendants were entitled to proceed wtih their actions to evict. Judgment was thereupon entered dismissing plaintiff’s complaint on the merits.
Following the entry of judgment and on June 20, 1949, notice of appeal was filed and a motion for stay pending appeal was presented to the trial court but denied. On July 21, 1949 we granted appellant’s motion for an order to preserve the status quo by enjoining defendants from evicting any of their tenants pending the appeal.
At the threshold of this case we are confronted with a motion to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the case has become moot. In support of the motion affidavits have been filed and presented. These affidavits show without dispute that the housing accommodations involved have with one exception, been voluntarily vacated and possession surrendered to appellees. All of the tenants, except one, had quit the property and surrendered possession to appellees prior to the granting of an injunction pendente lite. The only remaining tenant, Miss Jennie Thomsen, has made affidavit. She states the following, among other things:
“During December, 1948, I voluntarily agreed to the termination of my tenancy in said apartments at any time, and I am willing to voluntarily terminate my tenancy therein at any time.
“I expressly consent to the sale of said premises by said Malcolm-Dallyn Company.
“I further state that the action of Tighe E. Woods, the Housing Expediter, brought against Malcolm-Dallyn Company, et al., in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Civil Action No. 335, Davenport Division, was brought without any knowledge or consent and was and is contrary to my desires, and I hereby request that the temporary injunctional order, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, on July 21, 1949, be forthwith dissolved, and that the aforesaid cause of action, now No. 14,008, in said Court of Appeals be dismissed.”
The remedy of injunction sought in this action is preventive and looks only to the future. Hygrade Food Products Corp. v. United States, 8 Cir., 160 F.2d 816; Benson Hotel Corp. v. Woods, 8 Cir., 168 F.2d 694. An injunction if in form granted would be ineffectual and any decision we might make would not decide any actual controversies because such controversies have ceased to exist. It is not the function of appellate courts to give opinions upon moot questions or abstract propositions which cannot affect the subject matter of the action before it. Fiske v. State of Missouri, 8 Cir., 69 F.2d 683; Barker Painting Co. v. Local No. 734, 281 U.S. 462, 50 S.Ct. 356, 74 L.Ed. 967; American Book Co. v. State of Kansas ex rel. Nichols, 193 U.S. 49, 24 S.Ct. 394, 48 L.Ed. 613; Mills v. Green, 159 U.S. 651, 16 S.Ct. 132, 40 L.Ed. 293. Any decision we might make would accomplish nothing. The motion to dismiss is therefore granted.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1