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.

Opinion:
Frank S. NORCROSS, Thomas M. Farr and Margaret Hundley Farr, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America.
No. 11497.
United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.
Argued April 21, 1955.
Decided April 29, 1955.
Thomas M. Farr, Camden, N. J., for appellants.
Dudley J. Godfrey, Jr., Washington, D. C. (H. Brian Holland, Asst. Atty. Gen., Ellis N. Slack, A. F. Prescott, Special Assts. to the Atty. Gen., Raymond Del Tufo, Jr., U. S. Atty., Newark N. J., Charles H. Nugent, Asst. U. S. Atty., Camden, N. J., on the brief), for the United States.
Before GOODRICH, McLAUGHLIN and STALEY, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
This is an income tax case. The appellants sue to recover taxes for the years 1942-1943 which they say were erroneously paid to the government. The case turns upon the question whether Section 107(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, 26 U.S.C. § 107(a), gives the plaintiffs rights. This, in turn, depends upon the nature of the employment of two of the plaintiffs, members of the bar, for legal representation of certain trusts and estates.
The' trial court concluded that the nature of the employment did not establish a case for the plaintiffs. Because the conclusion rests upon a fact finding as to the nature of their employment by clients, it is within Fed.Rules Civ.Proc. rule 52(a), 28 U.S.C., and is not to be. reversed unless clearly erroneous. We do not find it clearly erroneous. Indeed, the whole matter was so thoroughly and clearly analyzed by Judge Madden in the district court that we are content to affirm on the basis of his opinion reported in D.C.N.J.1953, 114 F.Supp. 51.

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

Choices:

Answer: 3