Many North Dakota slip-and-fall and apartment hazard cases settle anywhere from a few thousand dollars to the tens of thousands, with severe injury cases going higher. For the filing deadline, your sister usually has 6 years to sue for injury in North Dakota. But the urgent part is not the court deadline - it is preserving proof right now. Apartment camera footage can disappear in days, ice or water gets cleaned up, broken stairs get repaired, and the insurer will argue she caused her own fall. She should get photos, the incident report, witness names, and her medical records immediately.

Here is why the clock is already running.

North Dakota's general injury deadline is 6 years under state law, so she is not out of time just because a few weeks passed. But if this happened at a Bismarck apartment complex, the strongest evidence may vanish long before that. Management may salt the walkway, fix the handrail, replace lighting, or delete surveillance footage on a short retention cycle.

She needs to lock down:

• Photos/video of the exact hazard and shoes worn
• Names and phone numbers of tenants or workers who saw it
• The apartment's incident report
• Her ER, urgent care, or clinic records
• Proof of prior complaints about the same hazard, if any

North Dakota also uses modified comparative fault. If she is found 50% or more at fault, she can recover nothing. If she was partly at fault but less than that, her compensation gets reduced. That is why details like warning signs, lighting, maintenance logs, and whether the landlord knew about the danger matter so much.

If the property is owned by a city agency or public housing authority instead of a private landlord, special notice rules can come up faster. In Bismarck, that distinction matters, so identify the exact property owner immediately.