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:
COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE v. MERCHANTS’ & MANUFACTURERS’ FIRE INS. CO.
No. 5398.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
Aug. 28, 1934.
Frank J. Wideman, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Sewall Key and J. P. Jaekson, Sp. Assts. to the Atty. Gen., for petitioner.
William II. Harding, of New York City, for respondent.
Before BUFFINGTON, DAVIS, and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges.
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.
This is a petition for review of a decision of the Board of Tax Appeals. The taxpayer, a stock fire insurance company, bought at various times shares of stock of Corn Products Refining Company, Standard Oil Company of California, Brooklyn Union Gas Company, and American Can Company. The taxpayer deposited this stock with the American Trust Company. The purchases were made on a rising market, and therefore the stock first acquired cost less than the later purchases.
Sales of securities were decided upon by the executive and finance committee of the taxpayer’s board of directors. When the committee would decide to sell certain stock, it would give verbal instructions to a clerk employed in the investment department of CoiToon & Reynolds, Inc., which managed the taxpayer’s investment business. The clerk would place a cross on a card, known as a director’s card and kept for the convenience of the committee, opposite the purchase entry of the particular lot of stock to be sold. A broker would thereupon be instructed to sell a specified number of shares, and the American Trust Company to deliver to the purchaser, upon payment therefor, certificates for the number of shares involved; but the particular shares to be sold and delivered would not be designated.
This procedure was followed in the sale of 500 shares of Com Products Refining Company, 500 shares of Standard Oil Company of California, 100 shares of Brooklyn Union Gas Company, and 300 shares of American Can Company. Although the cross-marks on the director’s card were, with the exception of the American Can Company stock, placed opposite the shares last purchased, the American Trust Company delivered certificates representing the stock first purchased by the taxpayer.
The taxpayer computed its income tax as though it had sold, in each instance, the stock last acquired. The Commissioner held that the stock sold was that represented by the certificates actually delivered rather- than the stock which the taxpayer intended to sell, and therefore assessed a deficiency. The Board of Tax Appeals found as a fact that the taxpayer intended to sell the later acquired stock, and sustained the taxpayer’s contention that the loss or gain on the sales should have been computed by deducting the cost of the stock, identified by the cross-marks on the director’s cards, from the sum which it obtained by the sales of the stock. It thus disregarded the cost of the stock represented by the certificates delivered, and substituted the cost of the stock represented by other certificates, which the taxpayer intended to sell but which were not in fact sold.
We think the test should be that applied by the Board of Tax Appeals in Horner v. Commissioner, 28 B. T. A. 360, affirmed by this court on July 26, 1934, 72 F.(2d) 407; i. e., what was actually done rather than what was intended to be done. Whatever the intention may have been, the stock actually sold was that first acquired. We think the Board of Tax Appeals erred in giving effect to the intention rather than the fact.
The sale of the American Can Company stock presents a somewhat different situation because of the absence of evidence as to the intention of the taxpayer to sell any particular shares and as to the identity of the certificates delivered. The Commissioner determined the gain by applying the cost of the shares first acquired against the proceeds of the sale of the stock. The Board of Tax Appeals made no distinction between this transaction and the other three, and sustained the taxpayer’s contention that it meant to sell the last acquired. Article 58 of Regulation 74 provides: “When shares of stock in a corporation are sold from lots purchased at different dates and at different prices and the identity of the lots can not bo determined, the stock sold shall be charged against the earliest purchases of such stock. *' * * ”
This is commonly known as the “first in, first out” rule. Judge Woolley in Snyder v. Commissioner (C. C. A.) 54 F.(2d) 57, 58, said: “The rule is an arbitrary one, as from the very nature of the ease it must be; yet, again from the nature of the ease, it is reasonable.”
If the taxpayer is able to identify the shares sold, and thus prove his real loss or gain, the rule permits him ample opportunity to do so. We think that the “first in, first out,” rule is reasonable and valid and that the Commissioner correctly applied it in the instant case.
The order of the Board of Tax Appeals is reversed and remanded for proceedings in conformity with this opinion.

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