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:
RELIABLE TRANSFER CO., INC., Plaintiff-Appellee and Cross-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-Appellant and Cross-Appellee.
Nos. 540, 803, Dockets 73-1513, 73-2325.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued Feb. 19, 1974.
Decided May 23, 1974.
Herbert B. Halberg, New York City (Krisel, Beck & Halberg, New York City, on the brief), for plaintiff-appellee and cross-appellant Reliable Transfer Co., Inc.
Janis G. Schulmeisters, Atty., Admir. & Ship. Section, Dept, of Justice, New York City (Harlington Wood, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Washington, D. C., Robert A. Morse, U. S. Atty., Brooklyn, N. Y., and Gilbert S. Fleischer, Atty. in Charge, Admir. & Ship. Section, Dept, of Justice, New York City, on the brief), for defendant-appellant and cross-appellee United States.
Before LUMBARD, FRIENDLY and TIMBERS, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
This case arises from a little saga of the sea — this time involving a coastal tanker, the Mary A. Whalen, that got lost in the waters just outside New York harbor on a clear night in December 1968 when the seas were rough, the tide was running strong and a breakwater light maintained by the Coast Guard was out. The tanker ended up stranded on a sand bar off Rockaway Point.
The owner of the tanker, Reliable Transfer Co., Inc., invoking the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the district court under the Suits In Admiralty Act, 46 U.S.C. § 741 et seq. (1970), sued the United States to recover damages sustained by the stranded tanker.
After a bench trial in the Eastern District of New York before Orrin G. Judd, District Judge, the court found that the stranding of the tanker was caused 25% by the negligence of the Coast Guard in its failure properly to maintain the breakwater light and 75% by the negligence of the vessel in making a U-turn in a dangerous channel when its captain knew that the breakwater light was not operating. The court held under controlling law that each party should bear half of the damages.
We hold that the court was not clearly erroneous in finding that the negligence of both parties, in the proportions stated, caused the stranding.
The vessel’s claim that it was not at fault borders on the frivolous; under circumstances requiring extreme care in navigation and with adequate navigation instruments available, the captain simply got lost and was considerably further north than he thought when he made a U-turn in a dangerous channel knowing that the breakwater light was not operating.
We also reject the government’s claim that its failure properly to maintain the breakwater light was merely a condition rather than a cause of the stranding. Surely it was a but-for cause. The court found, as common sense would dictate, that if the breakwater light had been operating the captain would not have stranded the vessel. Viewing the government’s claim as essentially a variation of the last clear chance doctrine-— given the captain’s knowledge of the dangerous situation, he should have been able to avoid the stranding — we refuse to apply here the doctrine of last clear chance which has been given only limited application in admiralty. See Petition Of Kinsman Transit Co., 338 F.2d 708, 719-21 (2 Cir. 19641, cert. denied, 380 U.S. 944 (1965).
We also decline the invitation to seize upon this case as a vehicle to overrule the equal division of property damage rule that has long applied in admiralty cases where both parties are at fault. Weyerhaeuser Steamship Co. v. United States, 372 U.S. 597, 603 (1963); The Max Morris, 137 U.S. 1, 13 (1890); North Star, 106 U.S. 17 (1882). And we particularly see no basis either in authority or in principle for saying that the rule should apply in collision cases but not in stranding cases; for it was so applied in Atlee v. Northwestern Union Packet Co., 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 389 (1874). We of course are mindful of the criticism of the equal division of damages rule and we recognize the force of the argument that in this type of case division of damages in proportion to the degree of fault may be more equitable. Ulster Oil Transport Corp. v. The Matton No. 20, 210 F.2d 106, 110 (2 Cir. 1954) (L. Hand, J., dissenting); Black & Gilmore, Admiralty § 7-20, at 440 (1957). But we also are not insensitive to the considerations rooted in strong public policy that have impelled our Court as one of the inferior federal courts for many years to abstain from attempting to change the law in areas such as this, preferring to leave doctrinal development to the Supreme Court or to await appropriate action by Congress. In re Adams’ Petition, 237 F.2d 884, 887 (2 Cir. 1956); cf. Benazet v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Co., 442 F.2d 694, 697 (2 Cir. 1971), aff’d, 406 U.S. 340 (1972); McLaughlin v. Trelleborgs Augfartygs A/B, 408 F.2d 1334, 1338 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 395 U.S. 946 (1969). As Judge Hincks so aptly put it in In re Adams’ Petition, supra, 237 F.2d at 887:
“[T]he rule of equal division of property damage is so well established in this country that it would create intolerable confusion were a court of intermediate jurisdiction such as ours to deviate from it. We shall therefore continue to apply the rule until there shall be authoritative sanction for departure therefrom.”
We agree.
We affirm substantially for the reasons set forth in the well reasoned opinion of Judge Judd below.
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