WINDING UP 
261 
created by the company, and be paid accordingly 
out of any property comprised in or subject to that 
charge. 
Subject to the retention of such sums as may be 
necessary for the costs and expenses of the winding up, 
the foregoing debts shall be discharged forthwith 
so far as the assets are sufficient to meet them, and in 
the case of debts to which priority is given by para- 
graph (e) of sub-s. (1) of this section formal proof 
thereof shall not be required, except in so far as is 
otherwise provided by general rules. 
In the event of a landlord or other person distraining 
or having distrained on any goods or effects of the 
company within three months next before the date 
of a winding up order, the debts to which priority 
is given by this section shall be a first charge on the 
goods or effects so distrained on, or the proceeds of 
the sale thereof: 
Provided that in respect of any money paid under 
any such charge the landlord or other person shall 
have the same rights of priority as the person to whom 
the payment is made. 
In this section the expression ‘the relevant date 
means— 
(a) in the case of a company ordered to be wound 
up compulsorily which had not previously com- 
menced to be wound up voluntarily, the date 
of the winding up order; and 
in any other case, the date of the commencement 
of the winding up. 
If a debenture contains a fixed as well as a floating charge, 
the priority conferred by the section as read with s. 78, applies 
only in respect of the assets subject to the floating charge 
[Lewis Merthyr Consolidated (1929), 1 Ch. 498]. 
With reference to the priority of salaries and wages of 
clerks and servants, it has been held that a managing director 
is not a clerk or servant within the meaning of the section 
[Newspaper Proprietary Syndicate (1900), 2 Ch. 349]. And 
it has been held that a company’s secretary who does not give 
the whole of his time to the service of the company, but 
pays a clerk to do the bulk of the work, is not a servant 
so as to be entitled to priority, although in other cases he 
may be [Cairney v. Back (1906), 2 K.B. 746]. And there 
have been other decisions on particular facts. I+ would 
b)