London media specialist suffers loss of three partners

LONDON media firm The Simkins Partnership has been hit by the departure of three partners, including leading defamation lawyer Rod Dadak, who has defected to Lewis Silkin after a disagreement over strategy.

Dadak, whose departure coincides with the decision of film and music law specialists Tim Curtis and Lawrence Harrison to set up their own niche firm, was only at The Simkins Partnership for two years, having moved there from niche defamation practice Swepstone Walsh.

He will head Lewis Silkin's defamation team, which consists of two other partners and two assistants.

He said that the firm put a higher premium on defamation work and was "quite clearly expansionist".

Nigel Bennett, a partner at The Simkins Partnership, said the firm did not share Dadak's vision of a stand-alone defamation practice, seeing its future instead as a part of a media litigation group headed by litigation partner Dominic Free.

He described Dadak's departure as amicable. But he stressed that The Simkins Partnership would carry on doing defamation work under Free's leadership.

Dadak is to join Lewis Silkin on 1 April.

Curtis and Harrison left the firm in February to set up a niche practice based in London's Great Portland Street.

Curtis said that he and Harrison had wanted to set up their own practice "while they were still young enough".

Bennett said that The Simkins Partnership was "very sorry to see Harrison and Curtis go" but added that the firm could understand their desire to go it alone.