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:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Adam M. STACY individually; d/b/a Rocky Hollow Coal Co., Defendant-Appellee. UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. 4-A COAL COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellee. UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Dennis C. STEVENS, Defendant-Appellee.
Nos. 86-1675, 86-1679 and 86-3719.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Nov. 3, 1987.
Decided Dec. 23, 1987.
Edward R. Cohen, Civ. Div., U.S. Dept, of Justice (Richard K. Willard, Asst. Atty. Gen., Washington, D.C., John P. Alderman, U.S. Atty., Roanoke, Va., Barbara L. Her-wig, Katherine S. Gruenheck, Civ. Div., U.S. Dept, of Justice, Washington, D.C., on brief), for plaintiff-appellant.
Linwood Theodore Wells, Jr., Richmond, Va., Thomas Ross Haggard, University of South Carolina School of Law, Columbia, S.C., for defendant-appellee.
Before PHILLIPS and SPROUSE, Circuit Judges, and HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge.
PER CURIAM:
Upon prevailing in three civil actions for money judgments, the United States sought to tax the clerk’s regular filing fee as costs in each case. The United States is exempted from the payment of such filing fees, but the United States contends that it should be considered as having done so constructively. It relies upon the historical development of provisions for compensation of district court clerks.
The claims were disallowed in the district courts, and we affirm.
In this appeal, three separate cases were consolidated. In United States v. Stacy and in United States v. 4-A Coal Company the United States obtained judgments for the collection of civil penalties. In United States v. Stevens, it sought repayment of a student loan. In each case, it obtained a judgment for the amount for which it sued, plus taxable costs. Since each case was commenced without the payment of any filing fee, however, no filing fee was included in the allowable taxable costs.
The United States harks back to the early days of this Republic when district court clerks charged filing fees to private litigants and retained the fees collected as compensation for the clerk’s services. That general scheme was altered by the Act of February 26, 1853, ch. 80, 10 Stat. 161. That statute fixed a minimum and a maximum amount for the clerk’s compensation. If the fees collected by the clerk were less than the minimum, the United States paid the clerk the difference. If the fees collected by the clerk exceeded the maximum, he was required to pay the excess into the United States Treasury. That scheme was again altered by the Act of February 26, 1919, ch. 49, 40 Stat. 1182. Thereafter, the district court clerk was paid a fixed salary by the United States, and all of the filing fees collected by the clerk were required to be paid by the clerk into the Treasury. Though the United States may have commenced a civil action without the payment of a filing fee, the United States contends that it is solely responsible for the payment of the clerk’s compensation and should be considered as having constructively paid filing fees, the original, historical source of the clerk’s compensation.
We are unpersuaded, however. Unquestionably, the United States pays no filing fee as such, and its obligation to pay the clerk’s salary does not vary with the number of civil actions filed by the United States. Its obligation of salary payment is the same whether it files no civil action or many. It is true that the United States now compensates district court clerks by salary payments in lieu of the initial scheme by which the clerk derived his compensation out of filing fees paid by private litigants. That may be of historical interest, but it does not follow that the United States has paid to the clerk a filing fee that never was assessed. Provision for the clerk’s compensation has not been the obligation of private litigants for many years, and the losing party in a civil action brought by the United States should not be required to make partial reimbursement to the United States for the clerk’s salary that is paid by the United States in any event.
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