The 'NTSB Wraps Up AA587' article in 'Aviation Week and Space T'. (Oct 25, 2004) is enlightening:
"One of those ultimate (rudder) load violations was on American's Flight 903 in May 1997 and the other was on an Interflug A310 in 1991. Other cases include an Air France Flight 825 incident in December 1999 on an A310 where limit load was exceeded."
"A key document, American says, is a June 19, 1997, Airbus internal memorandum stating that in Flight 903's 'rear fuselage, fin and empennage the ultimate design loads may have been exceeded'. This knowledge did not come to the NTSB or American until the document was revealed after the Flight 587 accident more than four years later".
There are similarities with the ATR-42 icing certification and the cover-up, which involved some ATR-42s in Europe. "The flight accident...and earlier incidents and accidents had made the problem known within ATR (AW&ST July 15, 1996, p.41)." Certain administrators in the ( US) FAA were, long before the crash at Roselawn, aware of problems with some European ATRs during icing conditions, involving aileron "snatch".
"An independent study requested as part of the NTSB Flight 587 investigation showed that at higher speeds, where pilots rarely use the pedals, the rudder of these two types is 3.2-10 times more sensitive (in terms of deflection per incremental force) than other transports.... An NTSB poll of Boeing, Douglas and Airbus histories showed that no other type had this history of fin overload".