That right, however, depends on expenses incurred by the tenant resulting from the landlord’s failure to perform any covenant or agreement. In the action at bar plaintiff rests no claim on any covenant of the lease. His lawsuit was stimulated by the exercise of the landlord’s contractual right to serve a notice to cure. Plaintiff would equate that right with an interference with his quiet enjoyment in breach of the landlord’s covenant. The covenant of quiet enjoyment in a lease simply guarantees a tenant’s lawful possession against competing claims of others. For its breach an eviction, actual or constructive, is required. Fear of eviction is not enough. (Rasch, New York Landlord & Tenant, Summary Proceedings [2d ed], §§ 890, 893; 33 NY Jur, Landlord and Tenant, § 161.) The covenant does not guarantee unlawful possession nor vitiate rights of the landlord to enforce tenant’s obligations under the lease.
Therefore, since plaintiff is not even alleging the breach of the landlord’s covenant of quiet enjoyment or any other agreement under the lease, his rights under section 234 of the Real Property Law, if any, do not come into play.