Turning to the issue of priority of liens as against security interests in the same property,
Professor Gilmore in the 1950’s analyzed how the different jurisdictions in the United States had dealt with the issue of priority between the statutory lien and the security inte re stunder the relevant statutes at the time as t he lengthy state by state process of adopting the Uniform Commercial Code (‘UCC’) in the United States was begun He divided the different states into three groups: one group (perhaps as many as half of them) had no position on the issue of priority, another group subordinated the statutory liens to the security interests in the same equipment, and a third group provided that the statutory lien had priority over existing, perfected security interests.
There was no single guiding principle within these three groups that would allow
prediction as to how the different jurisdictions would act