Summons

Yes, you can contact the collection agency and settle the debt outside court. But first of all you must check whether the said debt is real.

i myself are bad with records so i understand that it may be hard to find out if you really owe this debt or not. See back to when it happend and go through your checkbooks and see if you happend to pay anything towards it. If you cannot, talk to your insurance find out what the claim was for and if they paid or not and how much they paid if they did and if they did not why? this may be thier mistake and they may pay it. I had a hospital bill for a yearly exam that the insurance did not want to pay, because the doctors put it in as just a physical which i already had that year and they only pay for 1. It wasnt a physical it was a yearly gyno exam. the doctors processed it wrong so the insurance wouldnt pay. once you figure this out go to the hospital and see what can be arranged. It can be taken care of before having to go to court.