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:
H & M CAKE BOX, INC., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. BAKERY AND CONFECTIONERY WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION OF AMERICA, LOCAL NO. 45, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 74-1004.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Argued March 7, 1974.
Decided March 20, 1974.
Frederick T. Golder, Boston, Mass., for appellant.
Warren EL Pyle, Boston, Mass., with whom Angoff, Goldman, Manning, Pyle & Wanger, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, McENTEE and CAMPBELL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
After we remanded this case to the district court, 454 F.2d 716 (1st Cir. 1972), another judge, relying on intervening decisions of the Supreme Court and this circuit, granted summary judgment for the defendant union. The district court held that both the employer’s claim for damages for alleged violation of the no strike clause and its contention that the union had repudiated the collective bargaining agreement, or its arbitration provision, were issues for the arbitrator to decide. The court therefore dismissed the action brought by the company for damages for the union’s alleged violation of the agreement’s no strike pledge. We affirm.
The collective bargaining agreement in question calls broadly for “amicable settlement by arbitration of grievances and disputes arising under it.” Arbitration procedures are provided “[i]n the event a dispute or grievance arises as to the meaning, application or enforcement of this agreement. . ” Employer’s claim for damages would rather plainly fall within this “broad” clause. Similarly, and under the very rationale we adopted in General Dynamics Corp. v. Local 5, Marine & Shipbuilding Workers, 469 F.2d 848, 853-854 (1st Cir. 1972), the question of what conduct constitutes repudiation of the contract or its arbitration provision would be a “dispute or grievance . . . as to the meaning, application or enforcement . . . . ” Cf. Operating Engineers, Local 150 v. Flair Builders, Inc., 406 U.S. 487, 491-492, 92 . S.Ct. 1710, 32 L.Ed.2d 248 (1972).
Thus, following Flair and General Dynamics, both decided after our earlier decision herein, the district court properly concluded that the employer could not pursue its damages action in court, at least before a determination by the arbitrator of non-arbitrability or of repudiation. If plaintiff wishes to pursue the argument that breach of the no strike clause excuses compliance with the arbitration clause, he must address it to the arbitrator. Cf. Gateway Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers, 414 U.S. 368, 387, 94 S.Ct. 629, 639, 38 L.Ed.2d 583 (1974).
Appellant fears that should he now seek arbitration, the union will raise the defense of laches. It is doubtless true that appellant could not have predicted the legal fluctuations which resulted in our two disparate opinions and which may have prolonged these proceedings and tipped the outcome to appellant’s disadvantage. Presumably such circumstances tending to justify his initial preference for court proceedings in lieu of arbitration may be presented to the arbitrator in mitigation should laches be raised.
Affirmed.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1