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General Business Experience

Business law comprises a large part of our firm’s practice. We work with clients on their business related transactions, from routine legal review of contracts to major transactions and negotiations, to protect our clients’ interests within the context of those contracts, agreements, leases or subleases. Our experience in business includes:

• business start-ups
• financing transactions
• expansions of existing businesses
• business acquisitions
• business incorporations
• contract negotiation, including development contracts, construction contracts, acquisition contracts, loans and other financial agreements
• contract interpretation and analysis
• contract drafting and review
• drafting business board governance (bylaws, standard operating procedures, and other policies)
• assisting auditors in annual audits and forensic reviews

We also have experience with various governmental funding authorities, including the BIA loan guarantee program, Department of Agriculture Rural Utility Services (RUS) Funding, and EDA-CDBG Funding, among others.

Tribal Economic Development

We are proud to serve our tribal business clients in providing resources for future generations, including tribal economic development projects. We have assisted our tribal clients in the initiation and expansion of a wide range of business enterprises. Our experience in tribal economic development involves contracts for projects, including the following:

• building and operating casino projects, hotels, cultural centers
• expansion of an existing casino enterprise
• gasoline and convenience store projects
• franchises
• construction of community water and wastewater treatment facilities and other infrastructure

Cooperative Law Experience

We are uniquely experienced in cooperative business and housing law.  Cooperatives are organizations that are jointly owned and democratically controlled by members who may be producers, consumers, residents in a housing community, employees or small businesses. They can access specific federal tax benefits and are becoming an increasingly popular method for equitable community economic development.  Our general business law practice, described above, includes comprehensive services for cooperatives and people/organizations interested in forming them. 

Chestnut Law Offices, P.A. attorneys have extensive experience with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (“NAGPRA”) and other federal laws relating to the protection of cultural resources and tribal patrimony.We represented the Pueblo de San Ildefonso in validating a federal cause of action under NAGPRA for cultural patrimony in federally funded museums. See Pueblo of San Ildefonso v. Ridlon, 90 F.3d 423 (10th Cir. 1996). Our attorneys have successfully negotiated the return of invaluable artifacts sacred to Pueblo culture and religion, including careful transportation of priceless artifacts to Pueblo lands.

PROTECTION OF CULTURAL RESOURCES

Chestnut Law Offices gives broad definitions to cultural resources. Protection can include administrative proceedings, private negotiations and litigation to protect the use of places as well as objects and practices. A selection of actions taken to protect cultural resources includes:

• Protection of a sacred salt lake by stopping the issuance of a mining permit that would have caused a significant reduction of in-flows into the Salt Lake;
• Protection of a minimum flow from a spring used for ceremonial purposes, and cultural easement to protect use of the spring by a Tribe even though the spring was located outside Tribal lands;
• Assistance to U.S. Attorneys in prosecuting persons accused of stealing culturally important objects from a tribe’s land and then attempting to sell them on the open market;
• Preventing the auction of several objects of cultural patrimony from sale through a well-established west coast auction house;
• Helping to establish the process for certification of teachers of native language in public schools;
• Negotiation and other action to prevent non-permitted photography of cultural practices; and
• Assisting federal agencies in their land use management actions to prevent disruption of sacred sites outside Tribal land.

Chestnut Law Offices, P.A. represents several organizations recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and/or by the State of New Mexico as non-profit corporations or cooperative associations under New Mexico Corporation laws. We have successfully assisted our clients through the application process for recognition as tax-exempt organizations under Section 501(c)(3) and have developed valuable contacts with the Internal Revenue Service as a result.

Chestnut Law Offices, P.A. has also developed resources relating to the application process for obtaining an IRS Letter Ruling recognizing tribal entities as subdivisions of tribal governments, thereby achieving tax-exempt recognition and inclusion on the federal list of such entities. Our attorneys can help organizations decide which type of exempt recognition to seek.

Chestnut Law Offices, P.A. has been involved in real estate transactions over the years.  Our office has negotiated, prepared and reviewed various real property transactions and related documents for our clients including financing, security interests, deeds, leases, rights-of-way, easements, use licenses, construction contracts, build-to-suit leases, promissory notes, and loan agreements.

We have assisted tribal clients with land acquisitions, both by purchase and legislation, and placement of lands into trust status. The complexity and size of these acquisitions have varied, but each has increased a tribe’s land holdings.  An integral part of our real estate practice is using creative mechanisms to protect what is of greatest importance to Pueblos, such as cultural practices, easements, covenants, etc.

In 2006, we represented the Pueblo de San Ildefonso in negotiating a Settlement Agreement for the last remaining case filed with the Indian Claims Commission in 1951, (Pueblo of San Ildefonso v. United States, 35 Fed.Cl. 777 (1996)), which resulted in the passage of the Pueblo de San Ildefonso Claims Settlement Act of 2005, Public Law 109-286, authorizing the Forest Service to return some of the Pueblo’s aboriginal lands to tribal exclusive use.

Chestnut Law Offices, P.A. represents clients in all areas of Water Law, including litigation of water rights, application for water rights, permits, changes-in-place, and purpose-of-use, drafting 40-year water plans for water cooperative associations, investigation of water rights, and transfer of water rights in real estate transactions.

We currently serve as senior Pueblo attorneys in State of New Mexico v. Aamodt, No. 66cv06639 (D.N.M.), the leading water rights adjudication case in federal court to determine the nature and extent of Pueblo Indian water rights. After decades of litigation and over five years of negotiations, a Settlement Agreement was signed  in May of 2006 by four Pueblos and other governments involved in the Aamodt case. Implementation will require federal legislation and court action that will take years to complete.