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 respondents in the case that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
ATTORNEY GENERAL, United States of America ex rel. John Louis MERTZ #45035, Appellant, v. Howard YEAGER, Principal Keeper in Charge of the New Jersey State Prisson, Trenton, New Jersey, et al.
No. 72-1076.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
Submitted June 23, 1972 Under Third Circuit Rule 12(6).
Decided July 5, 1972.
Stanley A. Bass, New York City, for appellant.
Richard A. Fiore, Asst. Prosecutor, Hackensack, N. J., Geoffrey Gaulkin, Prosecutor of Hudson County by John J. Hughes, Asst. Prosecutor, Jersey City, N. J., for respondent.
Before ALDISERT, JAMES ROSEN, and HUNTER, Circuit Judges.
OPINION OF THE COURT
PER CURIAM:
Subsequent to two appeals to this court, United States ex rel. Mertz v. State of New Jersey, 423 F.2d 537 (1970), and 425 F.2d 819 (1970), appellant instituted a series of post-conviction relief proceedings in the New Jersey state courts. After the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court denied relief on appeal, he filed another petition for state habeas corpus relief in the New Jersey Superior Court on May 24, 1971. Prior to any adjudication thereof, he filed, on June 17, 1971, a Petition for Certification to the New Jersey Supreme Court. While both the state Superior Court and Supreme Court proceedings were pending, he filed a petition for removal to the United States District Court contending that he “cannot enjoy enforcement of his rights in the Courts of the State of New Jersey.” The district court denied the petition for removal. Appellant appeals from that denial. By brief, his counsel admits “respondent is technically correct in asserting that there is no legal basis here for federal removal under 28 U.S.C. § 1443 (1).” We agree.
The order of the district court will be affirmed.
. Nor is removal authorized under 28 U.S.C. § 1446 except by any defendant prior to trial.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 99