Real Property Law § 223-b prohibits a landlord from suing to recover real property from a tenant who, inter alia, has acted in good faith to secure or enforce his rights under a lease. Throughout the lease negotiations between these parties, the tenant has never argued for the rights to which he claimed *130entitlement under the 1972 lease, nor even made reference to that lease. Instead, he sought rights that exceeded the specific parameters of that lease, viz., exclusive use of the courtyard and the underground passageway, amendment to the certificate of occupancy to validate his illegal use of the basement level as living quarters, and the landlord’s assumption of the obligation to pay for electricity. At one point in the negotiations he even sought a 10-year lease, which plaintiff rejected. In fact, the 1972 lease, on which the tenant now relies, did not appear in this dispute until introduced by the tenant in the course of this litigation. Under these circumstances, the counterclaim for retaliatory eviction should have been dismissed as a matter of law.