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:
CHESAPEAKE & O. RY. CO. v. UNITED STATES.
No. 5157.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Jan. 1, 1944.
See, also, 130 F.2d 308.
J. M. Perry, of Staunton, Va., for appellant. ,
John C. Harrington, Atty., Lands Division, Department of Justice, of Washington, D. C., and R. Roy Rush, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Roanoke, Va. (Norman M. Lit-tell, Asst. Atty. Gen., Frank S. Tavenner, Jr., U. S. Atty., of Woodstock, Va., and Norman MacDonald, Atty., Department of Justice, of Washington, D. C., on the brief), for appellee.
Before PARKER, SOPER, and DOBIE, Circuit Judges.
SOPER, Circuit Judge.
The United States sued the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company for the expenses incurred in fighting a fire which was alleged to have endangered the George Washington National Forest in Virginia and to have been caused by a locomotive of the defendant. The case was submitted to a jury upon interrogatories in answer to which the jury found that although the locomotive was in good condition and was carefully operated, the fire was caused by sparks, cinders or coals dropped or emitted from the locomotive and that the fire started on the railway’s right of way which the Railway Company had failed to keep clear of combustible material at or near the point of origin of the fire. The jury also found that the officers of the United States Forest Service had reasonable ground to apprehend that unless they endeavored to suppress the fire it would spread to and damage the lands of the National Forest, and that the reasonable cost to the United States for the services of its employees in checking the spread of the fire was $1,723.90 for which amount a judgment was entered.
The defendant appealed on the ground that the evidence was not sufficient to support the jury’s findings that the fire was caused by sparks, cinders or coals from the locomotive, or the finding that the fire originated on the right of way, and also on the ground that the United States is not entitled to recover any part of the salaries of its regular employees for services rendered at the place of the fire whether the employees were forest service men or members of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The sufficiency of the evidence to support the findings of the jury was carefully considered by the District Judge; and we agree with his conclusion that although the evidence was largely circumstantial and lacking in definiteness, it tended to show that the locomotive had passed by, emitting sparks, a short time before the fire occurred; that combustible material had been allowed to collect on the right of way, and that it was a reasonable inference from the testimony of witnesses in the vicinity when the fire began that it ■originated on the right of way. The evidence was sufficient in our judgment to justify the submission of the interrogatories to the jury.
In respect to the allowance of the government’s claim for the wages paid its employees for the period during which they were fighting the fire, the appellant’s contention is that the efforts put forth on behalf of the government were expended not in its private capacity as landowner but in the performance of a public duty or function for which it is not entitled to be paid; and in order to indicate the public nature of the work reference is made to the statutes which authorize the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps to employ and equip men for the protection of the government forests, Act of June 28, 1937, 50 Star. 319, 16 U.S.C.A. §§ 584b and 584m, and require officials of the National Forest Service to aid in the prevention and ex-tinguishment of fires, Act of May 23, 1908, 35 Stat. 259, 16 U.S.C.A. § 553.
It cannot be said that the government is without power to protect its own property or to recover compensation from wrongdoers who have injured or trespassed upon it. In Utah Power & Light Co. v. United States, 243 U.S. 389, 37 S.Ct. 387, 61 L.Ed. 791, relating to certain lands of the United States held as forest reservations, it was held that the United States was entitled to compensation for the unlawful occupancy and use of the lands without its permission and that it had the right to protect the lands from trespass and injury. The court said (243 U.S. at page 405, 37 S.Ct. at page 389, 61 L.Ed. 791): “And so we are of opinion that the inclusion within a state of lands of the United States does not take from Congress the power to control their occupancy and use, to protect them from trespass and injury, and to prescribe the conditions upon which others may obtain rights in them, even though this may involve the exercise in some measure of what commonly is known as the police power.” See Annotation, 70 L.R.A. 877; cf. United States v. Miller, 8 Cir., 28 F.2d 846, 849.
The pending case was previously before this court in United States v. Chesapeake & O. R. Co., 4 Cir., 130 F.2d 308, and it was held that if the allegations of the complaint were sustained, the United States was entitled to recover not only under the Virginia statute, § 4435(b) of the Virginia Code of 1936, which permits the recovery of all expenses incurred in fighting a fire carelessly set on any lands, but also under the rule in the law of torts that a person whose interests have been endangered by the wrongful conduct of another is entitled to recover for expenditures made in a reasonable effort to avert the threatened harm, 4 Restatement, Torts, § 919. These rules of law should now be applied since it has been found that the facts support the complaint. The government was entitled to recover for the expenses incurred and the wages earned by its employees in fighting the fire to prevent it from spreading to the government’s land.
Affirmed.

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