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:
Thomas TESSIER et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. STATE FARM MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 72-1015.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Submitted April 5, 1972.
Decided May 1, 1972.
Herbert Murphy Associates, Springfield, Mass., on brief for appellants.
David B. Avery, Boston, Mass., Bruce P. Gilmore, Jr., Norwell, Mass., and David L. Delaney, Milton, Mass., on brief for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, McENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
ALDRICH, Chief Judge.
The case presents on perhaps superficially appealing facts, a request for unusual relief. Plaintiff (we will use the singular), allegedly always domiciled in Massachusetts, while commorant in Georgia was involved as a guest passenger in an automobile accident. The driver, a resident of Arizona, is deceased, apparently leaving no estate other than a liability policy written by the defendant, State Farm Mutual Insurance Company, an Illinois corporation. Plaintiff, having returned to Massachusetts, brings this diversity action in the Massachusetts district court against the insurance company as sole defendant as it does business in Massachusetts and is subject to process. Neither Massachusetts, Georgia, nor Arizona has direct action statutes. The company moved to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action against it, and for lack of an indispensable party, namely, the legal representative of its insured. The district court dismissed, with an opinion, 334 F. Supp. 807, and plaintiff appeals.
Plaintiff asks us to “recognize reality,” but in this he is very selective. In the first place, he asserts that “in reality” all that he is doing is seeking to avoid the formality of obtaining the appointment of an ancillary administrator of the insured tortfeasor within the Commonwealth. This contention, at least if plaintiff has examined the law with any care, must be regarded as disingenuous. The probate court’s jurisdiction to appoint an administrator presupposes the existence of an asset within the Commonwealth. Had the decedent matured the claim against the insurer by virtue of causing the accident within the Commonwealth, or had he been a resident or taken out the policy within the Commonwealth, there might well have been an asset here. Cf. Gordon v. Shea, 1938, 300 Mass. 95, 99, 14 N.E.2d 105; Milmoe v. Toomey, D.C.Cir., 1966, 123 U.S.App.D.C. 40, 356 F.2d 793, 795-796. As it is, no legal representative of the insured can be designated.
The second “reality” with which plaintiff asks us to deal is that the insurer is the real party in interest. In so doing he discounts the fact that by naming the insurer as the defendant he brings forcefully to the attention of the jury the existence of insurance. In spite of plaintiff’s natural readiness to call this not a prejudicial matter — as, of course, it is not to him — the Massachusetts court considers that it is. See Dempsey v. Goldstein Bros. Amusement Co., 1919, 231 Mass. 461, 121 N.E. 429; cf. Perry v. LaPlante, 1962, 343 Mass. 570, 179 N.E.2d 913.
There is still a further reality to which plaintiff would give short shrift. Under Massachusetts procedure the injured party’s right to proceed against the insurer, even though it may mature at the time of the accident, cf. In re Fay Stocking Co., 6 Cir., 1938, 95 F.2d 961, is a two-step procedure. First, a judgment must be obtained against the insured. Then the insurer may be pursued, if the judgment is not satisfied, by a bill to reach and apply. The most obvious reason for the two steps is that the insurer may have a defense, vis-a-vis its insured (except in the case of the compulsory insurance, with which we are not concerned), such as a breach of the cooperation clause. Cf. Potter v. Great American Indem. Co., 1944, 316 Mass. 155, 157, 55 N.E.2d 198; Goldstein v. Bernstein, 1943, 315 Mass. 329, 52 N.E.2d 559. Manifestly it is procedurally difficult, and sometimes perhaps substantively impossible, to raise this defense in conjunction with the original tort action.
With these observations as to other realities, we turn to plaintiff’s basic point that this court should be proeedurally innovative and grant him the reality of pursuing directly his claim against the tortfeasor’s insurer. We do not consider this procedural. Plaintiff cites no authority to the effect that creating a direct cause of action against the insurance company is other than substantive. The latter is apparently the view in Georgia, Massachusetts and Arizona. Cf. Arnold v. Walton, 1949, 205 Ga. 606, 54 S.E.2d 424; Connolly v. Bolster, 1905, 187 Mass. 266, 72 N.E. 981; Haigler v. Burson, Ariz., 1931, 298 P. 404. It would be highly inappropriate for us, in a diversity case, to make new law for whichever of these jurisdictions the proper conflicts rule would hold concerned. See Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Elec. Mfg. Co., 1941, 313 U.S. 487, 497, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 85 L.Ed. 1477.
Affirmed.
. Plaintiff’s supporting argument that requiring someone to be appointed to this position would constitute “involuntary servitude” within the Thirteenth Amendment strains credulity.
. To the extent that the decision in Seider v. Roth, 1966, 17 N.Y.2d 111, 269 N.Y.S. 2d 99, 216 N.E.2d 312 (4-3) [described as “much criticized” in Farrell v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 2 Cir., 1969, 411 F.2d 812, 813], might be argued to be of peripheral support to the plaintiff, the dissenting opinion makes clear that the majority was in fact holding contrary to Gordon v. Shea.

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