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I was served by an officer this morning with a pretrial notice. I’ve never been sued before so I’m not quite sure what to do. Details below: Original Creditor: Credit One Account Open: May 2018 Account Closed: October 2018 Amount Sued For: $1105.15 Attachments: Bill of Sale to Midland, Affidavit of Credit One Bank & Midland, The account info (account #, Name, Bill amount, last payment date, etc.), and my first and last credit card statement. Any advice would be helpful. I’m worried this would impact my credit score that I’ve been working to bring up. Should I work with Midland to pay the debt? Should I file an attribution? Thanks in advance.

Hello, I am doing some research about debt buyer lawsuits in Rhode Island, specifically what tends to happen to the lawsuits after they are filed. In looking at court records for cases filed by Midland Funding in one month this year, I have determined that at least 14% were dismissed with prejudice. In these cases, the court docket shows that the defendants were served with the summons but never filed answers. The dockets also show that Midland Funding dismissed those cases within a few weeks to a few months after they were filed. During that same month, Midland obtained default judgments in at least 51% of the cases they filed, so I'm interested in why Midland would dismiss some cases but get defaults in others. If I had to, I would speculate that after being served with the lawsuit, the defendants contacted Midland Funding's lawyers and provided proof that they were uncollectible; although I would be surprised if Midland would give up just for that reason. In any event, I am wondering if anyone has had a similar experience with Midland Funding: being served with a lawsuit, not filing an answer, and still having Midland dismiss with prejudice. If so, I'd be very interested to know what led to the dismissal. Thanks in advance.