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:
Frank SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Richard L. DUGGER, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections; Tom Barton, Superintendent of Florida State Prison at Starke, Florida; Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General of the State of Florida, Respondents-Appellees.
No. 86-3333.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
Oct. 5, 1989.
Billy H. Ñolas, Office of Capital Collateral Representative, Tallahassee, Fla., San-tha Sonenberg, Public Defender Service for the Dist. of Columbia, Washington, D.C., Baya Harrison, III, Tallahassee, Fla., for petitioner-appellant.
Lawrence A. Kaden, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, Fla., Patricia Conners, Dept, of Legal Affairs, Carolyn Snurkowski, Tallahassee, Fla., for respondents-appellees.
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING AND SUGGESTION FOR REHEARING IN BANC
Before HATCHETT and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges, and RONEY, Senior Circuit Judge.
PER CURIAM:
Action on the petition for rehearing in this case has been unduly delayed. The only issue of concern to the Court is the so-called Hitchcock issue. Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393, 107 S.Ct. 1821, 95 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987), was decided after this case was decided by the district court and while it was on appeal. At one point on the appeal, petitioner, Frank Smith, sought to have the appellate proceeding held in abeyance pending resubmission of this issue to the state court. This motion was denied. If Smith had been entitled to relief on any other ground asserted on appeal, such delay by that procedure would not have been justified.
The Court, however, denied relief on all grounds initially asserted on this appeal by opinion dated March 9,1988. 840 F.2d 787. The mandate has not been issued pending consideration of the Petition for Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing In Bane, and the supplemental briefs filed in connection therewith.
As far as is known to this Court, petitioner has not yet sought to resubmit the Hitchcock issue to the state court in light of the United States Supreme Court decision and subsequent cases decided by this court and the Florida Supreme Court.
It is inappropriate for this Court to deal with these issues on this petition for rehearing. The petition is denied without prejudice to the petitioner’s properly presenting the claims to the Florida state courts, a procedure that is required by the exhaustion rule prior to the submission of the issue to the Federal court. Were it not for Hitchcock v. Dugger, supra, this petition for rehearing would have been denied without comment. This Order clarifies that the unexhausted claim based on these later cases is not foreclosed by this decision.
The Petition for Rehearing is DENIED, and no member of this panel nor other Judge in regular active service on the court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing in banc (Rule 35, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; Eleventh Circuit Rule 35-5), the Suggestion of Rehearing In Banc is DENIED.

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: 0